Anti-abortion Catholics breaking with JD Vance over abortion pill comment

Catholic social conservatives are calling on Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) to clarify his statements about access to the abortion pill, mifepristone, saying that his latest stance runs contrary to his Catholic faith.

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, has made opposition to abortion a central part of his public identity and voting record in the Senate, but many social conservatives see his move toward the middle on abortion as a compromise borne of his desire to align himself with President Donald Trump for the general election.

While many of his conservative Catholic allies are willing to give Vance the benefit of the doubt if he moderates his anti-abortion positioning as a pragmatic matter, some think that he has crossed a line with his comments expressing approval of the abortion pill, considering that nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 involved mifepristone.

Access to mifepristone

On July 7, before his nomination as Trump’s running mate, Vance told NBC’s Kristen Welker that Republicans “certainly don’t” want to reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill, mifepristone, which was the center of the Supreme Court’s first case on abortion since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022.

“The Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that medication. Donald Trump has supported that opinion. I support that opinion,” Vance said.

When Welker asked Vance to confirm that he supported access to mifepristone, Vance said, “Yes, Kristen, I do,” and then quickly changed the subject.

Some anti-abortion groups, including the organization CatholicVote, have tried to defend Vance’s comments, arguing that he was merely referring to the court’s ruling as it pertained to FDA procedures and that he did not owe NBC a direct response about the underlying question of medication abortion.

But Michael Pakaluk, a professor of political economy at the Catholic University of America, said the ruling pertained to the narrow issue of standing, or the plaintiff’s ability to sue, rather than the merits of the case, meaning that Vance misled by saying that the court decided that the public should have access to mifepristone.

“That’s not what the Supreme Court said — nothing whatsoever about [the idea that the] American people shouldn’t have access to the abortion pill,” Pakaluk, a longtime Catholic anti-abortion advocate, told the Washington Examiner. He said Vance’s law degree from Yale should have enabled him to better describe the nuance of the Supreme Court case. 

“He has legal training, and he misdescribed the case,” Pakaluk said. “And he presented it as ‘I’m in favor of the abortion pill.’ This is completely unacceptable.”

Catholics asking for clarity

Edward Feser, a professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College who has commented on anti-abortion politics, told the Washington Examiner that Vance needs to explain whether he personally supports access to the abortion pill or if he merely meant to say he respects the Supreme Court’s decision to not address access to the abortion pill.

“I think a lot of people who otherwise would support him and who are attracted to his candidacy in other ways would like for him to clarify his position, to reaffirm his long-standing pro-life position,” Feser said.

Peter Wolfgang, President of the Family Institute of Connecticut Action, referenced the teaching of Pope St. John Paul II in a recent article calling on both Trump and Vance to rethink their rhetoric on abortion. The former Pope approved of settling for “incremental pro-life strategies” when a politician’s personal repudiation of abortion was well known, but not of outright support for legal abortion.

Accordingly, Feser said, it’s acceptable for a Catholic politician to not push an anti-abortion position in a moment “because it’s simply not feasible,” but he or she cannot “endorse a pro-choice position as a matter of principle.”

“It’d be one thing if he just simply said, ‘Well, the Supreme Court has made this ruling, and it’s the highest court of the land, so we have to kind of go along with that.’ And it’s another thing altogether to say, ‘Yes, I support access to this abortion pill,’” Feser said. “That’s not a matter of theological nuance.”

Several weeks have passed since Vance’s comments, prompting some to suggest that he has had plenty of time to change course if he so chose.

A spokesman for Vance’s Senate office declined to comment directly on Vance’s position on mifepristone and instead directed the Washington Examiner to a supportive statement published by the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America after his nomination.

Vance’s public journey as a Catholic

In April 2020, Vance published an essay about his conversion to Catholicism, describing the tension between his low-church Protestant roots and the deeper intellectual traditions that drew him to becoming Catholic.

Over several years, Vance wrote that he “began to see Catholicism as the closest expression” to the faith of his grandmother, Mamaw: “obsessed with virtue, but cognizant of the fact that virtue is formed in the context of a broader community.”

Vance, who was not raised going to any church, also said he is both a novice Catholic and relatively new to institutionalized Christianity. 

“I try to keep a little humility about how little I know, and how inadequate a Christian I really am,” wrote Vance in 2020.

Other Catholic politicians, most notably former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and President Joe Biden, have sparked a debate in the American Catholic Church over whether or not they should be eligible to receive the Eucharist because of their public advocacy of policies to promote access to abortion.

In contrast to those politicians, Vance has a record of promoting anti-abortion policies, and only the one extemporaneous comment suggesting he favors access to the abortion pill.

Still, Feser said that in this case, the issue is “not so theologically subtle.”

“Anybody who converts to the Catholic Church is going to know that the Catholic Church teaches that abortion is, in principle, evil and that no Catholic politician can endorse it,” said Feser.

The GOP platform and the future of the party

Prior to earning a spot on the ticket with Trump, Vance had a strong record on anti-abortion advocacy.

“His courage in exposing the Democrats’ agenda of abortion for any reason, even in the seventh, eighth, or ninth month, helped propel him to a decisive victory in the 2022 midterm elections,” SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement following Trump’s vice presidential announcement. “Vance’s hardscrabble upbringing informs his compassionate approach to this issue.”

Vance also was a speaker at the Ohio March for Life in 2023 ahead of a referendum on adding abortion rights to the state constitution, which passed. Vance as senator has also supported several pro-family economic policies with the intent of making parenthood more affordable.

But Vance, poised now to be a successor to Trump for 2028, represents the future of the party, which this month stripped its platform of a commitment to ending abortion nationally.

Some anti-abortion advocates have raised the fear that the Republican Party is shifting toward an abortion-rights position in juxtaposition, even as the Democratic Party becomes more aggressive in opposing limits to abortion.

“The Republican Party really did destroy itself,” Pakaluk said, arguing in a recent essay that removing the anti-abortion plank from the platform severed its ties to the tradition of Lincoln that respects the sanctity of life “in all states and jurisdictions.”

Feser said that regardless of Vance’s personal beliefs, there will be “a very strong temptation just to let those issues drop at the national level.”

“I think even many people who are willing to tolerate it for the moment are going to become disillusioned in the long run and give up their support for the party,” Feser said. “I think it is a miscalculation.”