Trump VP finalist JD Vance under scrutiny for past abortion comments

Past abortion remarks by Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, resurfaced online this week as he could potentially join former President Trump's 2024 ticket.

Vance, a former Trump critic who's since become a staunch ally of the 45th president, took heat from Democrats during his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign for statements that one fact-checker determined were taken out of context by his Democratic opponent, Tim Ryan. The old story popped up this week on Drudge Report, the famed news aggregator that once supported but later turned against Trump.

In 2021, Vance defended a Texas law that banned most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Asked by Spectrum News in Columbus, Ohio, at the time whether he supported abortion exceptions for cases of rape and incest, he disagreed with the question's premise and said "two wrongs don't make a right."

"At the end of day, we are talking about an unborn baby. What kind of society do we want to have? A society that looks at unborn babies as inconveniences to be discarded? … 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," Vance said.

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"The question to me is really about the baby," Vance added, according to the Washington Post. "We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life."

During an Ohio Senate debate in 2022, Ryan accused Vance of saying rape was "inconvenient."

"J.D., you called rape ‘inconvenient.’ Right?" Ryan said. "Rape is not inconvenient. It's a significant tragedy, and he thinks we should have Ohio state law which says if you're raped or pregnant through incest, you should be forced to have the baby."

Vance fired back that he never called rape "inconvenient," and claimed Ryan knew that was a false statement. He said at the debate he was pro-life with "reasonable exceptions." He also said that year he supported Sen. Lindsey Graham's, R-S.C., proposed 15-week abortion ban that included exceptions for rape, incest and the mother's life.

He went on to frame Ryan as an extremist himself on abortion and for flip-flopping on the issue. He later beat Ryan in the hotly contested race by six points. Since then, Vance has reportedly ascended to become one of the top contenders for Trump's vice presidential pick. 

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PolitiFact reviewed Ryan's comments at the time and concluded, "Vance did not directly say ‘rape is inconvenient.’ But when he was asked whether laws should allow people to get abortions if they were victims of rape or incest, he suggested that society should not view a pregnancy or birth resulting from rape or incest as 'inconvenient.'"

This week, a CNN fact-check dinged President Biden's campaign for falsely framing Vance's past remarks praising the Heritage Foundation as a full-throated endorsement of "Project 2025," a lengthy proposed policy document that's come under fierce criticism from the Left in recent weeks and includes a proposed national abortion ban.

Last year, Vance called a successful referendum in Ohio to enshrine abortion access a "gut punch" and urged Republicans to do a better job of winning voter trust on the issue. In December, he told CNN he supported exceptions for "life of the mother, for rape, and so forth."

Vance's recent abortion comments have put him more in line with Trump, such as agreeing with the former president's stance on abortion law being determined by individual states since the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

"Donald Trump is the pragmatic leader here. He's saying most abortion policy is going to be decided by the states. We want to make it easier and more affordable for young women and parents to have families to begin with," Vance told "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Vance also said this week he supported the Supreme Court's opinion on Americans having access to the abortion medication mifepristone.

Vance's office declined comment when reached by Fox News Digital.