Sen. J.D. Vance has recently claimed he believes mifepristone should be accessible—but new reporting shows that just a year ago, he was one of more than 40 Republican lawmakers who thought the opposite.Mother Jones; Evan Vucci/Pool/AP
When former President Trump announced Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate earlier this week, anti-abortion firebrands mostly celebrated the pick, given the senator’s staunch anti-abortion record. But as I reported, there was one aspect of that record they didn’t love: his recent comments to NBC’s Meet the Press claiming he believes mifepristone, one of the two pills used in medication abortion, should remain accessible.
Those critics may be excited to learn that, just last year, Vance signed onto a letter with more than 40 other Republican lawmakers demanding that the Department of Justice apply the more than 150-year-old Comstock Act—a 19th-century anti-obscenity law that bars the mailing of “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use”—to “shut down all mail-order abortion operations” nationwide. That’s precisely what Project 2025, an initiative led by dozens of conservative groups and spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, has said the DOJ should do in the next conservative administration.
The news, which appears to have first been reported by the Washington Post on Wednesday, offers even more evidence of Vance’s strong opposition to abortion. As I reported earlier this week, Vance has also, in the past, said he would support a national abortion ban; argued against rape and incest exceptions; and asserted that “there’s something comparable between abortion and slavery,” alleging that both have a “morally distorting effect on the entire society.” (On CBS’ Face the Nation in May, Vance seemed to try walking back his most extreme views—but only by endorsing Trump’s take on leaving most abortion policy to the states, and with a qualifier: “I wanna save as many babies as possible.”) It also appears to provide more evidence of the threats the Comstock Act could pose to abortion rights under a Republican administration.
The letter Vance signed onto—along with hardline right-wingers including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), among others—came soon after the DOJ issued a memo saying the Comstock Act could not be marshaled to prosecute the mailing of abortion pills “because there are manifold ways in which recipients in every state may lawfully use such drugs.” (Mifepristone can also be used for miscarriage management, the DOJ notes, and medication abortion remains legal in the majority of states.)
In their letter, the Republican lawmakers alleged the DOJ had “twisted the plain meaning of the law in an effort to promote the taking of unborn life,” adding that because Congress didn’t repeal Comstock or clarify its application to abortion pills, it should be seen as “the supreme law of the land.” The lawmakers also falsely claimed that abortion pills are dangerous, when in actuality, more than 100 scientific studies have confirmed their safety and efficacy—including a recent study I wrote about showing that they are just as safe and effective when prescribed virtually and mailed to patients.
But it’s worth noting that, in demanding the DOJ use Comstock to “shut down all mail-order abortion operations,” it’s unclear if the Republican lawmakers were referring only to barring the mailing of abortion pills, or also the mailing of equipment used in procedural abortions—which could result in a nationwide total abortion ban, as legal scholar Mary Ziegler pointed out to me when we spoke about the Comstock Act a few months ago. (Spokespeople for Vance and Trump did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones on Thursday afternoon seeking clarity.)
This obfuscation, though, is nothing new: Trump has both tried to distance himself from Project 2025 and dodged questions about his stance on the Comstock Act, as I’ve pointed out. He has also tried to both take credit for appointing three of the five conservative Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade, and tried to distance himself from the consequences, insisting he would leave questions about abortion rights “to the states” if re-elected. And more recently, the GOP did not explicitly call for a national abortion ban in their newly-adopted platform—but instead hinted at it by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which they have long argued could be interpreted so as to grant embryos the rights of human beings, thus making abortion illegal nationwide.
Democrats have recently tried to tackle Comstock head-on, by introducing legislation in the House and Senate to repeal the sections of the law they say most directly threaten abortion, as I reported last month. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who introduced the legislation in the upper chamber, said in a statement in response to the reporting on Vance’s previously articulated support for Comstock: “The threat that a future Trump-Vance administration will misuse Comstock to ban abortion nationwide is now a five-alarm fire.”
The Biden campaign also sounded the alarm in response to the news about Vance’s previous support for marshaling Comstock to limit abortion rights: “Trump’s choice of a running mate is even further proof that he will ban abortion nationwide the minute he gets the chance if he wins this November—and he and his allies don’t think they need Congress to get it done,” Sarafina Chitika, senior spokesperson for the Biden campaign, said in a statement. “In Trump’s eyes, Vance’s deep commitment to carrying out their Project 2025 agenda is what qualifies him for the ticket.”
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), co-chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, told me by phone on Thursday: “Nobody should be fooled by what J.D. Vance or Donald Trump are saying now about abortion. They will say anything to get elected, and then they’ll just ban these things.” She added that House Republicans have blocked legislation introduced by Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), aimed at repealing parts of Comstock, from coming up for a vote.
All in all, it looks like Kristan Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life, was right when she claimed earlier this week that Vance “either recently changed his mind or his public talking points” about abortion pills. But actions speak louder than words—and the GOP keeps showing us they have no plans to protect abortion rights if Trump gets a second term in the White House.
