Donald Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate as a signal of his confidence in his ability to reclaim the White House, but in the days since the Republican National Convention, Vance’s record has served as an anvil for the campaign—and a magnifying glass for concerns about a second Trump presidency. Nowhere is this more evident than on issues of reproductive rights and abortion access.
As president, Trump played a pivotal role in ending federal protections for abortion rights, appointing three Supreme Court justices necessary to overturn Roe v. WadeAs the decision — and the many state-level restrictions on reproductive freedoms that followed — sparked a backlash from voters, Trump has tried to soften his stance on abortion in an apparent election ploy.
Now Trump and his running mate say abortion should be left to the states, though they have previously signaled their support for a national ban. They have also suggested, alarmingly, that they would be okay with states monitoring women’s pregnancies.
In May, a host at NBC affiliate WGAL in Pennsylvania pointed out to Trump that there were ads running suggesting he would support certain states banning pregnancy screenings.
“Well, that’s up to the states again,” Trump replied. “They’re going to decide how to do it. Right now, there are a lot of states that come in without that, without anything like that. That’s up to the states. Everything on that question is now in the hands of the states, and that’s where every legal scholar — and that’s on both sides, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative — wanted it to be in the hands of the states. And that’s what I did.”
Vance, the Ohio senator, has gone further. Last summer, he signed a congressional letter calling on the Biden administration to withdraw a draft rule designed to prevent police in states that ban abortion from using personal health information to track and charge fees to people who travel to other states for abortion care.
“Abortion is not health care—it is a brutal act that destroys the life of an unborn child and harms women,” Vance and the lawmakers wrote, alleging that the proposed rule “unlawfully impedes the enforcement of compassionate laws that protect unborn children and their mothers, and directs health care providers to defy lawful court orders and search warrants.” (The rule was finalized in April.)
During his 2022 Senate campaign, Vance argued that regulating abortion on a state-by-state basis would not be enough, because patients could still travel to blue states to get abortions.
“Let's say Roe v. Wade “That resolution was overturned,” he said. “Ohio bans abortion… you know, in 2024. Then, every day, George Soros sends a Boeing 747 to Columbus to disproportionately load black women to get them to go get abortions in California. And of course, the left is going to celebrate this as a victory for diversity.”
Similarly, the Republican Party’s 2025 Agenda Guide—which Trump has disavowed because its abortion provisions are politically toxic—includes plans to use federal agencies to expand “abortion oversight,” and calls on the incoming administration to “use every tool available, including cutting funds, to ensure that every state accurately reports how many abortions occur within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, in the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”
“Because of Trump, state attorneys general looking to enforce strict anti-abortion laws are now free to go after reproductive health data in mobile phone apps,” said Emilia Rowland, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. “But the 2025 agenda laid out by Trump and Vance would go even further—calling for every abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or accidental pregnancy loss due to medical treatments like chemotherapy to be reported to the federal government under a Trump administration, tearing down health data privacy protections under the Mobile Health Insurance and Accountability Act, allowing states to monitor patients and doctors, monitor pregnancies, restrict women’s freedom to travel for abortion care, and ultimately use health data against patients and providers in court. This isn’t about politics, it’s about control.”
