By now, you’ve probably heard the comments from former President Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, calling people without children “childless cat ladies” being bad for the country.
Well, Jennifer Aniston also heard these resurfaced statements, and she’s taking the Ohio senator to task.
The recently resurfaced comments from Vance, then a senate candidate, were made in 2022 while speaking with then-Fox News talking head, Tucker Carlson. He said:
We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats … by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. It’s just a basic fact. You have Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does that make any sense when we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t have a direct stake in it.
The comments have caused uproar in the media, both social and traditional, and Aniston is among the latest to convey her disappointment over such accusations.
On Instagram Stories, the Morning Show actress shared the clip, writing in text overlay on the clip:
“I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States. All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
Aniston’s sentiments on IVF refer to the fact that Vance (along with the majority of Senate Republicans) voted against the Right to IVF Act earlier this summer.
Sponsored by Tammy Duckworth (D, IL), Patty Murray (D, WA), and Cory Booker (D, NJ), the bill would establish a nationwide right to assisted reproductive technologies like IVF and ensure more accessibility to these technologies via lower costs.
For years, Aniston’s fertility was the subject of innumerable tabloid rumors— Was she pregnant? Wasn’t she pregnant? Was she trying to get pregnant? Why was she trying to get or not get pregnant?
While she would occasionally express her disdain for the press speculation and invasion of her privacy on the matter (as with the 2016 HuffPo op-ed “For The Record”), she remained silent on the specific questions surrounding, bluntly, her uterus until 2022.
In a candid interview with Allure, Aniston revealed that over the years she had, in fact, been trying to get pregnant.
“It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” she said. “All the years and years and years of speculation… It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”
Across media and social media, Aniston’s response to Vance’s comments are garnering attention of all stripes. Many are supporting her, some are mocking her, and some are enjoying making memes about the Instagram statement.
Even conservative pundit Meghan McCain addressed the exchange, warning fellow Republicans to avoid such inflammatory language as it appeared to be “activating women across all sides.”
“This is not who we are,” McCain stated.
But Vance’s 2022 comments, do appear to reflect a broader worldview, or at least one he has had as recently as two years ago.
In 2021, Vance advocated giving parents as many votes as they had children.
In similar rhetoric that we see in the Carlson clip, Vance elaborated, “You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”
