Women across the country are clawing back at a recently resurfaced comment from Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, saying the country is "being led by a bunch of childless cat ladies.”
Sen. Vance, R-Ohio, made the comment during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, singling out Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as having no direct stake in the country’s future because they do not have progeny.
In the clip, Vance goes on to say that the women he's referencing "are miserable in their own lives and the choices that they've made, so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children, and how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
“I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” Jennifer Aniston, who does not have children of her own and has been candid about her journey with in vitro fertilization, wrote on Instagram on Wednesday.
"All I can say is... Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day,” Aniston continues. “I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too."
Harris does not have any biological children, but has two stepchildren since marrying Doug Emhoff in 2014. Buttigieg is also a father, having adopted twins in 2021.
“How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?” Ella Emhoff wrote on Instagram Thursday.
Doug Emhoff's ex-wife, film producer Kerstin Emhoff, also came to her defense, called such attacks "baseless" in a statement to The New York Times and CNN.
"For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I," Kerstin Emhoff said. "She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it."
On ABC's "The View" this week, moderator Whoopi Goldberg did not mince words in responding to Vance's comments.
"Sir, there are people who have chosen not to have children for whatever reason," she said. "There are people who want to have children who cannot. How dare you. You never had a baby; your wife had a baby. But, you never had a baby, so you know nothing about this. How dare you?"
"Women? You heard how he thinks of you," Goldberg added.
Goldberg's former "View" co-host Meghan McCain echoed a similar sentiment on social media, saying that she has "been trying to warn every conservative man I know - these JD comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends."
"These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian," McCain, the daughter of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, continued. "This is not who we are."
On Thursday, the Harris campaign posted a clip of a Vance speech, where he said, “When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids.”
In a post on social media honoring IVF Day, which is observed on July 25, Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said: “Happy World IVF Day to everyone except JD Vance."
"True to form, JD Vance is marking World IVF Day by insulting couples struggling with infertility, demeaning women’s choices and their freedoms and reminding voters about his and Donald Trump’s anti-IVF Project 2025 agenda," she said in a statement.
Chitika called out Vance for voting against legislation to protect IVF access and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump for nominating an anti-IVF judge to the federal bench.
Parenthood has become an unexpected flash point in this year’s election cycle, and not just in the race for the White House.
“Political leaders should have children,” Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2022, posted to X on Wednesday. Masters is running to represent Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“If you aren’t running or can’t run a household of your own, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations? Skin in the game matters.”
Masters is running against Abe Hamadeh to succeed outgoing Rep. Debbie Lesko, and will face off against Hamadeh, who is not married and does not have kids, in a primary next week.