JD Vance Calls 2021 'Childless Cat Ladies' Remark Boneheaded in New Memoir

Q: JD Vance's memoir links faith and policy. What prompted his significant shift on national abortion laws?

The clearest driver was Vance’s 2019 conversion to Catholicism, which he says reshaped how he understood public life and moral questions, including abortion. In “Communion,” Vance presents his politics as flowing from a deeper religious change. He describes Catholic social teaching as intellectually decisive and says his faith altered his view of human dignity and the responsibilities of a Christian in public office. That helps explain why he moved from earlier, more sweeping support for making abortion illegal nationwide toward a more cautious, persuasion-focused approach. The other major factor was political reality. Vance writes that abortion is a “challenging” issue for Christians and explicitly points to the strong 2023 Ohio vote protecting abortion rights as evidence of the pro-life position’s “political unpopularity.” In the memoir, he argues that this should push advocates toward “prudence” and “Christian charity,” including taking seriously the fears of women considering abortion. So the shift was not presented as a simple reversal of belief on abortion itself. Rather, it was a change in how he thought national policy should be pursued: less emphasis on blunt national prohibition, more emphasis on persuasion, empathy and politically workable limits. That evolution also matches his later public repositioning, including support for access to mifepristone in 2024 and his statement that a national abortion ban should not move forward.

3 articles · Updated · NBC News · Jun 15

JD Vance says in his memoir “Communion,” due out Tuesday, that his 2021 attack on Kamala Harris and other Democrats as “childless cat ladies” was “one of the dumbest things I ever said.”
The vice president writes the line was deliberately provocative but failed to illuminate his broader concern that U.S. society is increasingly hostile to having children, and says he should have shown more charity to Americans without children.
The admission marks a reversal from 2024, when Vance refused to apologize after the remark resurfaced during his debut as Donald Trump’s running mate and fueled a rocky national rollout.
In the same book, Vance ties the episode to a broader Christian political message, arguing anti-abortion advocates lost Ohio’s 2023 referendum because they failed to persuade voters and must make a better, more charitable case.