Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) wildly accused Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear of “wishing” someone in the Vance family would be raped after the Democrat criticized the senator’s past comments about sexual assault pregnancies.
In an interview Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Beshear called out Republicans for their “extreme” positions on the abortion ban and blasted Vance for opposing exemptions in rape and incest cases.
Referring to comments the Republican made during his 2021 Senate run, Beshear told host Mika Brzezinski, “JD Vance calls rape pregnancy ‘inconvenient.’ The downside is traffic. I mean, it is, do him go through this.”
“It’s someone being insulted, someone being insulted and then being told they have no choice after that, which fails any test of decency and humanity.”
In 2021, Vance said that allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest is not a question of whether a woman should be forced to give birth to a child, but a question of whether the child should be allowed to live, even if the circumstances of the child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem for society.”
“It’s really about the baby,” he concluded.
After Beshear helped bring the Ohio senator’s chilling comments to the public, Vance fired back Tuesday in a message 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 does @AndyBeshearKY want a member of my family raped?!? What a disgusting person.”
Beshear pushed back against Vance’s characterization when speaking to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell later Tuesday, accusing the senator of being a target when the policies he and the Republican Party support cause real harm to real victims.
“It’s ridiculous, but it’s also bending,” Beshear said. “JD Vance knows he and Donald Trump are so wrong on this issue, and that’s why he’s trying to make himself the victim.”
“Of course I never wish harm on anyone,” he added.
Beshear may be right that Vance and Trump are on the losing end of this.
Surveys have shown little support for abortion bans that do not provide exemptions for rape and incest cases, even within the Republican Party.
In May and June of this year, a poll conducted by the health care research organization KFF found that 69% of Republican women surveyed said they supported federal legislation protecting the right to abortion for victims of sexual violence.
