Jennifer Aniston is not pleased with J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, who has branded women like current vice president Kamala Harris “childless cat ladies.”
In a video from a 2021 appearance on Tucker Carlson’s old Fox News show, Vance—who was then running for his Senate seat—told Carlson that our country was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
During the segment, which was widely shared on social media this week, Vance continued, “It’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]—the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
Aniston shared a screenshot of the clip to her Instagram Story on Wednesday, writing, “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.”
She also blasted Vance’s extreme political stance on reproductive rights. “All I can say is…Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day,” Aniston wrote. “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.”
As a senator, Vance voted against the Right to IVF Act, which seeks to protect access to IVF services nationwide. In November 2022, Aniston shared her own fertility journey in an Allure cover story, revealing that she did IVF in her 30s and 40s without success—all while tabloids were breathlessly tracking her pregnancy status. “I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” Aniston 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.” In the end, Aniston said, she made peace with her inability to conceive: “The ship has sailed.”
In the Allure interview, Aniston also railed against the societal pressure on women to procreate. “God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child,” she said.
Since the clip resurfaced, Vance has faced a barrage of criticism from commentators who have taken issue with the premise of his remarks, and who have noted that Harris actually is a parent (she is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children). “These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,” the second gentleman’s ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff said in a statement to CNN. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” On Thursday, Ella Emhoff reshared the statement to her Instagram Story, imploring her mother to “say it louder for the people in the back.” She also wrote, “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like cole and I” and “I love my three parents.”
Buttigieg has also responded publicly to Vance’s attack. “The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey,” the transportation secretary told CNN. Buttigieg and his husband adopted newborn twins in September of 2021. “He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.”
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