Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) wildly accused Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear of “wishing” someone in Vance’s family would get raped after the Democrat criticized the senator’s past comments about pregnancies that result from sexual assault.
In a Tuesday interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Beshear called out Republicans for their “extreme” stances on abortion bans and denounced Vance for opposing exceptions in cases of rape and incest.
Appearing to reference comments the Republican made during his run for the Senate in 2021, Beshear told host Mika Brzezinski, “JD Vance calls pregnancy resulting from rape ‘inconvenient.’ Inconvenience is traffic. I mean, it is, make him go through this.”
“It is someone being violated, someone being harmed and then telling them that they don’t have options after that that fails any test of decency, of humanity.”
In 2021, Vance said allowing access to abortion in cases of rape or incest is not a matter of “whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term” but an issue of if “a child should be allowed to live even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to society.”
“The question really, to me, is about the baby,” he concluded.
After Beshear helped bring the Ohio senator’s cold comments to light, Vance responded with outrage Tuesday in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Twisting the governor’s words into an attack on his family, the vice presidential candidate wrote, “What the hell is this? Why is @AndyBeshearKY wishing that a member of my family would get raped?!? What a disgusting person.”
Beshear balked at Vance’s characterization while speaking to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell later on Tuesday, accusing the senator of pretending to be a target when policies backed by him and the Republican Party are causing actual harm to real victims.
“It’s ridiculous, but it’s also deflection,” Beshear said. “JD Vance knows that he and Donald Trump are so wrong on this issue, and so he’s trying to make himself the victim.”
“Obviously I never wish harm on anyone,” he added.
Beshear may be right about Vance and Trump being on the losing side of this issue.
Surveys have shown sparse support for abortion bans that offer no exceptions in cases of rape and incest, even within the Republican Party.
A poll that the health care research nonprofit KFF conducted in May and June of this year found that 69% of Republican women surveyed said they support federal legislation protecting the right to abortion for victims of sexual assault.
