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Jennifer Aniston has criticised Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance for resurfaced comments calling Democrat women a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives” who are making “the country miserable too”.
On Wednesday (25 July), the Friends star shared a clip of Vance making the comments on her Instagram story, writing: “‘I truly can’t believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States.”
Aniston took the opportunity to address Vance directly and criticise his stance on IVF.
“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,” she wrote. “Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
Vance made the comments during a 2021 interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, when he questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ leadership because she does not have biological children.
Vance said in the clip that the 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”.
“Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance said. “How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
The video has gone viral again in the build-up to the presidential election in November, with many women without children branding Vance’s comments as sexist, misogynistic and fulfilling a historical stereotype that women who choose not to have children are lonely and unloved.
American actor Liz Vassey, known for her roles on All My Children and on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, sarcastically replied to Vance’s comments on social media: “I had absolutely no idea I was miserable. Thank God there was a man around to tell me.”
Another X/Twitter user wrote: “As a non-birth giver, I’ve heard judgments about this since my 20s, but this thing about having no stake in society unless you produce young is very sinister to me.”
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“I choose not to have kids and I’ve never regretted it. I’m not lacking anything and my life is quite full, thank you very much,” a third woman wrote.
Other women on social media pointed out that the comments were insensitive towards women who cannot conceive due to health reasons.
Democratic presidential candidate Harris, one of the politicians Vance dubbed a “childless cat lady”, spoke about Vance’s stances on IVF and abortion in a campaign speech last week in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
“Understand, this is a fellow who — in the United States Senate — participated in blocking protections for IVF. This is an individual who has made every indication that he is for a national abortion ban,” said Harris.
In June, Vance voted to block the Right to IVF Act, which would have protected the accessibility of IVF services nationwide.
Aniston, who does not have any children, has been open about her own experience with IVF in the past.
The We’re The Millers actor has long been critical of the stereotype that women who choose not to have children, or cannot have them, have failed in some way.
In an essay written for Huffington Post in 2016, Aniston wrote that women don’t need to be “married or mothers to be complete”.
“We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone,” she wrote in the essay. “Let’s make that decision for ourselves and for the young women in this world who look to us as examples.”
