Jennifer Aniston has had it with vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s views on IVF and “childless” people, and she’s not the only one.
The Friends alum took to her Instagram Stories on July 24 to share a clip from a 2021 interview in which Vance, then a US Senate candidate, goes on a rant about “childless cat ladies” and how leaders without children — specifically calling out Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — care less about the country.
“We’re effectively run, in this country… by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” Vance says in the Fox News clip. “It’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, 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 put Donald Trump’s pick for Vice President on blast, writing, “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States,” she wrote in an Instagram Story. “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.”
And she’s right. Vance voted against a bill that would protect the right to IVF, which was debated in Congress last month following the Alabama court case that put the common fertility treatment under threat. Vance has also voiced support for a national abortion ban, saying in a 2022 debate, “My view on this is, generally speaking, Ohio’s gonna wanna have different abortion laws than California, than Texas, and I think Ohio should have that right. But some minimum national standard is totally fine with me.” (Note: a “minimum national standard” would by definition be a national ban.)
For Aniston, the IVF question hits home. Speaking to Allure in 2022, the actress said enduring “all the years and years and years of [pregnancy] speculation… was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would have given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it.” She also spoke on those rumors in a 2016 essay for the Huffington Post, writing, “We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child… We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete.”
Can you hear us applauding? The assertion that you have to have biological children to have a “direct stake” in your country is absurd. And as a reminder, Harris is a step-mom to two and Buttigieg and his husband Chasten adopted two children in 2021. (In an interview on CNN, Buttigieg noted that “the really sad thing is, [Vance] said that after Chasten and I had been through fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey. He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.”)
For her part, Aniston doesn’t comment on politics often, though she has become more outspoken in recent years — especially when it comes to reproductive rights. In 2020, she posted a photo on Instagram showing her slipping her ballot into a drop-off box, writing that she voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. “I voted for them because right now this country is more divided than ever,” the Friends alum wrote in the lengthy caption. “Right now, a few men in power are deciding what women can and can’t do with their own bodies. Our current President has decided that racism is a non-issue. He has repeatedly and publicly ignored science… too many people have died.”
Now, in 2024, Aniston appears to feel the same way. Beyond her comments on Vance, the actress also shared a reel on her Instagram story showing Harris questioning now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearings, a clip originally posted by actress Allison Janney. “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” asks the former prosecutor, as Kavanaugh struggles to answer.
Aniston also went on to share a blunt and powerful cartoon from the New Yorker, in which an annoyed child yells at their parents, “So I can’t tell a lie but the Supreme Court gets to do whatever the fuck it wants?” — a possible allusion to the Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
One thing is clear: Aniston’s coming out swinging this election season, and we’re applauding her empowering takes on reproductive rights.
Before you go, read about these celebrities who’ve spoken openly about getting an abortion:
