Never except when he did
Wellllll he didn’t support a national ban on abortion, he said he wanted a national ban on abortion. Totally different thing. To be fair.
J.D. Vance attempted to distort his own position on abortion in the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1,
suggestingthat he “never supported a national ban.” In the past, he has said that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was needed to stop women from going to another state to get an abortion.
It’s silly to say “suggesting” when it’s simply what he said. Sometimes you just have to use the same word over and over, for the sake of meaning.
Anyway, it’s what he said.
Can you support something without wanting it? Or want it without supporting it? You wouldn’t normally expect such a disjunction between these two things, especially within the same brain.
Okay, I’m going to explain the shuck-and-jive that’s going on here, because even when you know they’re being weasels, it’s important to have some insight into your opponent’s mindset.
He wants abortion to be illegal nationally can be explained as him supporting 50 state-by-state bans on abortion. In this, he technically doesn’t support a ‘national ban’, meaning one instituted at the federal level. He just wants there to be 50 smaller tyrannies where women are treated as second-class citizens.
Then, recognizing that this will never happen, he expresses ‘sympathy’ for those who want to be able to block their (women) citizens from escaping to a saner state to be able to get an abortion. In practice, this would be expressed by federal law requiring that non-ban states be required to cooperate with ban states in blocking women from out of state getting an abortion, or at least in ensuring they’ll get properly prosecuted when they get home.
I should note that this was pretty much how pro-slave politicians from the South had slavery laws working pre-Civil War.
Yes and that’s just what started the ACW: it was their intent to take it one step further and old Honest Abe seemed to be a bit of a barrier to that plan.
This time around we may just see the Union disintegrate; not great for the world because then China becomes top dog, but maybe livable for the West Coast.