Andy Beshear slams J.D. Vance for ‘making himself the victim’ over rape comment
The Democratic governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, slammed Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), saying he "makes himself the victim" in order to deflect from having to defend his views on abortion in the cases of familial rape.
At issue was a comment that Vance made during a September 2021 interview.
"Look, I think 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?" Vance said in 2021.
READ MORE: ‘My Wife Had This Baby’: J.D. Vance Trounced for ‘Misogynistic’ Views on Women and Family
"My view on this has been very clear and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong. 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. The question really, to me, is about the baby. 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 the right to life. Right now our society doesn’t afford that and I think it's a tragedy and I think we can do better," he continued.
Beshear appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe Tuesday. He was asked about how Vance and former President Donald Trump's abortion policy. Vance in particular has pushed for a federal abortion ban. Beshear criticized Vance's choice of words in that original interview.
“JD Vance calls pregnancy resulting from rape, ‘inconvenient.’ Inconvenience is traffic. I mean, it is. Make him go through this,” Beshear said in the clip, adding that Republicans like Vance "don't have any empathy at all" when it comes to abortion.
Vance took Beshear's comments to mean that he was hoping one of Vance's loved ones were assaulted.
"What the hell is this? Why is @AndyBeshearKY wishing that a member of my family would get raped?!? What a disgusting person," Vance wrote on X.
Beshear told reporters later on Tuesday that not only was that not what he meant, but that Vance was just making "an attempt to deflect," according to the Courier Journal. He also clarified that he was not wishing harm. He only wanted Vance to be able to "put himself in a different position and to understand why having exceptions, having reproductive freedom is so important in the first place."
“I mean, J.D. Vance knows that he and Donald Trump are so wrong on this issue. And so he’s trying to make himself the victim. Listen, Hadley Duvall was a victim, so were the women that were on the stage last night. The couple that had to go through a non-viable pregnancy are victims,” Beshear said, according to Mediaite.
Duvall appeared on stage at the Democratic National Convention Monday night, telling the crowd how she was impregnated by her stepfather at the age of 12. During her speech, she had harsh words directed to Trump, and his comments calling abortion bans "a beautiful thing."
"What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent's child?" Duvall asked.