PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The real reason to be furious about JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comments is not his rhetorical cruelty. It’s his attempt to hide the actual cruelty his party’s policies have inflicted upon American families and children.
By now, you’ve probably heard that the Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee has described Democrats as “childless cat ladies” who, by virtue of their having no biological children, supposedly lack a “direct stake” in America’s future. The remark has infuriated and energized women across the country. Here in western Massachusetts, where Vice President Harris held the first fundraiser of her presidential campaign on Saturday, homemade “Cat Ladies For Kamala” signs dotted the crowd.
Mostly lost in this culture-war brouhaha, however, is the more substantive claim Vance was making. Vance said his point was that Democrats are “anti-child” and that Republicans are the “pro-family party.”
Advertisement
“Our country has become particularly hard for parents, especially under the policies of Kamala Harris,” Vance said Sunday on Fox News, adding: “The left has increasingly become explicitly anti-child and anti-family.”
Words like “Orwellian” and “disinformation” are often overused, but such descriptors seem apt here. Just look at the two major parties’ records on family-related issues.
Americans who have experienced challenges with fertility, or know someone who has, have (understandably) bristled at the insensitivity of Vance’s remarks. But more consequential than his insensitivity are the things he and his party have done to compromise access to fertility care. For example, after an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos were people, leaving in vitro fertilization in legal limbo, Democrats tried to pass a bill federally guaranteeing women’s right to IVF nationwide. Republicans blocked it.
Advertisement
Vance was among those who voted against advancing the legislation.
Additionally, Democrats have for years been pushing to expand the child tax credit to help lift poor children out of poverty. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly stood in the way — including by scuttling a tentative deal reached earlier this year to trade a child-credit expansion for additional tax breaks for businesses.
Vance, who sometimes supports tax breaks for parents, claimed on Fox News that Harris has called for “an end to the child tax credit.” This is an outright fabrication. Harris has advocated for expanding the program, and she has highlighted its poverty-reducing potential all over the country.
At Saturday’s fundraiser in Massachusetts, among other recent events, Harris ticked off a list of other family-friendly policies that her party has fought for, such as expanded child care and paid family leave. Republicans do occasionally pay lip service to such proposals. But when given the chance to act, Republicans have blocked them from materializing.
Advertisement
Vance himself has even mocked calls to make child care more affordable, saying in 2021 that “normal Americans” do not want to “shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”
Meanwhile, Republicans’ draconian positions on abortion have, perhaps paradoxically, also made it more difficult for Americans to expand their families when they wish to do so, even when they don’t need IVF or other assisted-fertility treatments.
That’s because obstetricians, fearful of legal liability if they provide the emergency reproductive care their patients might need, have been fleeing red states. As a result, some hospitals have shut down their obstetrics wings entirely. This has made prenatal care and delivery more complicated and more dangerous. Already, states’ antiabortion laws have jeopardized the lives and future fertility of women who have been denied care for ectopic pregnancies and other complications.
Advertisement
Republican-run states have found even more creative ways to worsen access to prenatal care. For instance, a recently implemented Florida law requires hospitals that receive any Medicaid dollars to collect information on every patient’s immigration status (regardless of whether the patients are on Medicaid). As might be expected, many immigrant women have since steered away from necessary medical care, including prenatal care, as local health nonprofits have documented.
At the federal level, Republican lawmakers have also spent much of the past year trying to cut funding for WIC, the long-standing federal program that provides food support to poor pregnant women, new moms, infants and toddlers. In other words, since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, Republicans have literally schemed to take food away from hungry babies.
Vance is right about one thing: Our country does make it hard to be a parent, even though it would be economically and fiscally helpful for Americans to be rearing more kids. Surveys also show that Americans want more kids than they ultimately have. But kids are expensive, and our policies and work arrangements are often not family-friendly. Politicians could address such concerns, and some have.
Others, such as Vance, have chosen to ridicule them instead.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLyxtc2ipqerX2d9c4COaW5oa2Bkt6V51ZqlnJ1dmLWquMOlnKyrXZiutXnLmpuinaNk