“I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies,” Vance said. “I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options.”

This discussion came in the context of abortion, where Vance tried to demonstrate empathy and compassion rather than hostility to “childless cat ladies,” a line that has become central to Democratic attacks against the senator and Hillbilly Elegy author.

“I grew up in a working-class family in a neighborhood where I knew a lot of young women who had unplanned pregnancies and decided to terminate those pregnancies because they feel like they didn’t have any other options,” he said. “And, you know, one of them is actually very dear to me. And I know she’s watching tonight, and I love you.”

It is part of a rebranding of social conservatism pushed by former President Donald Trump, perhaps out of necessity. Abortion has become one of the Democrats’ top issues since Trump-appointed justices delivered the vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. Referendums promoting permissive abortion laws have passed virtually everywhere they have been put on the ballot, including deeply red states. Same-sex marriage is as entrenched in public opinion as it is enshrined in judicial precedent. There was a huge backlash against Republicans when access to in vitro fertilization treatments appeared even momentarily in danger due to an Alabama Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.

“The Republican Party should always be on the side of the miracle of life and the side of mothers, fathers, their beautiful babies,” Trump said in April after the GOP-controlled Alabama legislature “acted very quickly and passed legislation that preserves the availability of IVF” in the state, partially at his urging. “And that’s what we are.”

The former president has even cast support for IVF as the true anti-abortion position. “Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, including the vast majority of Republicans, conservatives, Christians, and pro-life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” he said after the Alabama vote. “What could be more beautiful or better than that?” He has since called for subsidizing IVF treatments via mandated private insurance coverage or taxpayer funds.

Trump is a sexual libertine who stumbled into social conservatism late in life by virtue of the coalition he needed to build to win the presidency in 2016. He wound up doing more for them than longer-term, committed abortion opponents, especially by appointing three anti-Roe justices to the Supreme Court. Sensing political danger, Trump now appears ready to run from at least some of the fruits of his labors.

But Vance is a committed social conservative, even if he might be less orthodox on economic policy. He is singing much the same tune as Trump, and it is not entirely clear that this is solely to align with the top of the ticket. “One of the things that changed is in the state of Ohio, we had a referendum in 2023, and the people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position [on abortion],” Vance said. “And I think that what I learned from that, Norah, is that we’ve got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust. So many young women would love to have families. So many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that’s going to destroy their livelihood, destroy their education, destroy their relationships.”

A possible problem for Trump and Vance is that not only will some of their policy proposals pit them against fiscal conservatives worried about costs and limited government, but social conservative activists. IVF in particular involves a certain amount of embryo destruction. It comes at the same time the Republican ticket is largely punting abortion to the states.

“JD Vance is so talented. It is extremely tragic that he is now defending abortion,” Live Action’s Lila Rose wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “This is the Trump influence. It is destroying the Republican Party.” She has previously said she wouldn’t vote for Trump this year.

The subject line of an emailed statement from Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign following the debate said simply, “Trump and Vance want to ban abortion nationwide.”

It’s possible that the Trump-Vance ticket’s handling of social issues will please no one. At the same time, they are competitive in at least two states with abortion ballot initiatives. A late September Fox News poll in Arizona found Trump leading Harris even as the abortion rights measure had more than 70% support.