Trump VP pick JD Vance says media twisted remarks on abortion, domestic violence. We looked closer

During the Republican National Convention’s opening night, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, spoke to Fox News for his first interview as former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee.

Sitting in the Fiserv Forum, the convention’s Milwaukee venue, Vance took questions from host Sean Hannity and addressed criticism about his previous comments on domestic violence, abortion and his 2016 disapproval of Trump.

A couple of times, Vance accused the media of twisting controversial comments about violent marriages and abortion exemptions. We took a closer look at four of his claims.

Vance addressed his own and Trump’s position on abortion. He described Trump’s position "to let voters in states" decide abortion laws as "reasonable," contrasting it with Biden’s. 

"Donald Trump is running against a Joe Biden president who wants taxpayer-funded abortions up until the moment of birth," Vance said.

This is False and misleads about how rarely abortions are performed later in pregnancy. 

The vast majority of abortions in the U.S. — about 91% — occur in the first trimester. About 1% take place after 21 weeks, and far less than 1% occur in the third trimester and typically involve emergencies such as fatal fetal anomalies or life-threatening medical emergencies affecting the pregnant woman.

Biden has said he supported Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion and was overturned in June 2022, and wants federally protected abortion access. 

Roe didn’t provide unrestricted access to abortion. It legalized abortion federally but also enabled the states to restrict or ban abortions once a fetus is viable, typically around 24 weeks into pregnancy. Exceptions to that time frame typically were allowed when the pregnant woman’s life or health was at risk.

The Democratic-led Women's Health Protection Act of 2021, which failed to pass the Senate, would have effectively codified a right to abortion while allowing for similar postviability restrictions as Roe.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden promised to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which says federal funds can't be used to pay for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the woman's life. However, the amendment has continued to be included in congressional spending bills. 

Hannity asked Vance to explain controversial 2021 comments about women staying in violent marriages. 

"Both me and my mom actually were victims of domestic violence," Vance told Hannity. "So, to say ‘Vance has supported women staying in violent marriages,’ I think it's shameful for them to take a guy with my history and my background and say that that's what I believe. It's not what I believe. It's not what I said." 

The comments in question came from a 2021 event Vance participated in at Pacifica Christian High School in California. In a conversation about his 2016 memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," the event moderator asked Vance about his experience being raised by his grandparents, following his mother’s divorces and struggles with drug addiction. 

"What is causing one generation to give up on fatherhood when the other one was so doggedly determined to stick it out even in tough times?" the moderator asked. 

Vance talked about the economic effect of men losing manufacturing jobs then discussed his grandparents’ marriage. 

In his memoir, Vance detailed his grandparents' relationship and told a story about Vance’s grandmother pouring lighter fluid on his grandfather and striking a match after he came home drunk. She had previously threatened to kill her husband if he came home drunk again, according to a 2016 review of the book in The Washington Post. 

Vance commended his grandparents for staying together, comparing it with younger generations. 

"This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.’ 

"And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages."

In response to a 2022 Vice News story highlighting the comments, Jai Chabria, a strategist for Vance, said the media missed Vance’s point.

"This is a comment that he made where he's talking about how it's important that couples stay together for the kids, that we actually have good kids first," he said. "All he is saying is that it is far too often the case where couples get divorced, they split up and they don't take the kids’ needs into consideration."

Hannity asked Vance to discuss his position on abortion, allowing the senator to address his past comments that have been criticized. 

"Let me go back to the issue of abortion," Hannity said. "And there was this article that said ‘Oh, JD Vance said it's inconvenient."

Vance told Hannity, "The Democrats have completely twisted my words. What I did say is that we sometimes in this society see babies as inconveniences, and I absolutely want us to change that."

We looked into comments Vance made on abortion while he was running for Senate in 2022 and his opponent claimed Vance had said that rape was inconvenient. We found that’s not directly what Vance said. 

In a 2021 interview Vance was asked whether laws should allow women to get abortions if they were victims of rape or incest. He said society should not view a pregnancy or birth resulting from rape or incest as "inconvenient." 

"My view on this has been very clear and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong," Vance said in 2021. "It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question really, to me, is about the baby."

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Vance criticized Trump. Hannity asked Vance about his comments before bringing up Vice President Kamala Harris’ disagreements with Biden during the 2019 Democratic primary. 

Hannity pointed to Harris’ contentious moment during a debate with Biden in which she criticized Biden’s opposition to busing students to integrate schools.

"There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me," Harris said.

"What she was referring to is the fact that Joe Biden had partnered with a former Klansman and tried to stop the integration of public schools," Hannity said. "In Joe Biden's words, he didn't want those schools to become racial jungles."

Vance reiterated Hannity’s comments.

"Kamala Harris basically said, ‘Joe Biden wouldn't want a little black girl like me to live in her neighborhood.’ He also palled around with Klansmen," Vance said. "She said this months before she joined his ticket Sean, I said some bad things about Donald Trump 10 years ago."

We previously rated a similar claim Half True. In a 1977 congressional hearing, Biden, then a senator from Delaware, described his opposition to federally mandated busing. 

During the hearing he said, "Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions built so high that it is going to explode at some point."

Biden advocated for "orderly integration," specifically of housing, and he supported many other aspects of desegregation and civil rights. But, as The New York Times reported, Biden also pushed an "anti-busing agenda into the early 1980s."

It’s unclear what Vance was referring to when he said Biden "palled around with Klansmen." We have previously fact-checked a 2008 photo of Biden with former West Virginia Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd.

Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Byrd renounced his views and publicly expressed his regret and shame over his involvement in the group.

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