U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Donald Trump’s running mate in the presidential election, speaks at a campaign event in Shelby. Twp. on Aug. 7, 2024. | Lucy Valeski
I find no need to defend my wife from J.D. Vance’s gasbaggery. She’s plenty capable of that herself. Truth be told, with an MBA, careers in network television and banking and 31 years of motherhood under her belt, Vance would be overmatched.
In Vance’s view, for the first 23 years of our marriage, my wife was a second-class citizen as a childless woman. Whether her inferiority was a matter of an unoccupied uterus or the fact she actually has one to date remains unclear in the ramblings of the Ohio senator and vice presidential candidate.
So I wonder, when our adopted son arrived one glorious March morning, did my wife’s status change in Vance’s eyes and the eyes of those who believe an increased birth rate (currently decreasing) is necessary for the nation’s salvation? Did she then become a full-fledged citizen? Was that enough?
I ask only because, while extolling the virtues of motherhood, Vance does not include stepmothers, which makes one wonder if he also declines to recognize adoptive ones. Others have taken up the same cudgel, such as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders as she berated Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother, apparently in lieu of any substantive discussion of political issues. (Pro tip for Sanders and others mispronouncing Harris’ name: That may be part of your playbook, but, outside your own echo chamber, disrespect, immaturity or ignorance come to mind.)
Finally, as a male without a medical degree in gynecology or obstetrics, obviously I have no frame of reference nor the appropriate plumbing to speak for a woman when reproduction is the subject, or any subject for that matter. They can speak for themselves. None of which has deterred legions of men in the U.S. Congress, state legislatures, governors’ offices and campaign headquarters from making the female body their purview.
Case in point: A Senate vote on Sept. 17 to invoke cloture and proceed to a measure that would have created a national law ensuring mothers-hoping-to-be access to in vitro fertilization treatments. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., eliminated an earlier provision and asked only whether treatments should be available nationally. Vance conveniently missed the vote. Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts and Deb Fischer were among the 44 nays in the Senate, essentially blocking the bill, which required 60 votes.
The percentage in the U.S. of couples using IVF is now at 2.5. That math works out to millions of Americans walking around whose births depended on IVF treatments. In Nebraska, where the latest data comes from 2021, the percentage was 1.7, or 409 children.
Wait, we have irony: How important is the we-need-to-increase-the-birth-rate argument to you if you’re voting against (or not bothering to vote on) access to IVF? However the 44 Senate no’s want to spin their vote (or Vance’s no-show reasoning), asking us to believe they support IVF, but continue to vote against its access, tests the limits of incredulity.
For some context, Vance has argued the following: That the country is being run by “childless cat ladies.” That the votes of couples with children should count more than those of couples without. That childless couples should pay more in taxes. That a solution to the rising costs of child care is grandparents. That we should make it easier for state law enforcement agencies to surveil pregnant women to determine if they are planning to leave the state for an abortion.
His positions are selling like Edsels, prompting an attempt at political recalibration. Candidates backtracking when their chops get busted is de rigueur for political campaigns, the calculus falling somewhere between “I was misquoted” and “You don’t understand.” Vance has recently thrown himself on the court of comedic opinion, pleading sarcasm, quipping and an insistence that he really doesn’t hate “childless cat ladies.”
Too late. Besides, dissing single, childless women, childless couples, stepmothers or anyone outside the narrow view of Vance’s sphere of reproductive acceptability is a swipe at all women.
Until we start singling out unmarried men (with or without pets) without offspring the way we do their female counterparts, J.D. Vance, et al., have little standing and dubious credibility … among women … and men.
So, no, I need not defend my wife nor any women whether they be single, married, childless, mothers, stepmothers, adoptive mothers, grandmothers or any combination thereof. They are capable of fiercely defending themselves and, I’m sensing, tired of having others make decisions for them from mansplainers to lawmakers.
I’m also thinking that whatever patooty kicking and name taking they need to do now will just be a start.
The real takedown happens in November.
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