Catfight in US over childbearing and abortion as election campaign heats up

WASHINGTON: It may prove to be a cat-astrophic setback for Team Trump considering more women in the US are registered to vote -- and do vote -- than men in

Presidential elections

.
A video in which Trump's vice-presidential running mate JD Vance disparages

childless women

who have pet cats has inflamed the socio-political echo-chamber in the US, where

gender and age

-- and now child bearing and parenting -- have come to the forefront.

Vance made the comment in a 2021 interview to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, saying the Democratic Party is 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.”
The barb was aimed at vice-president Kamala Harris and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg (who is gay), both of whom do not have biological children, but have step-children and adopted kids respectively. Vance has three children with his Indian-American wife Usha Chilukuri, and he often advances the view that childless adults have no stake in the future of America.

The putdown, rekindled in the election season, has ignited strong reaction from women, including celebrities, many of whom already see the

Trump-Vance ticket

and MAGA Republicans as sexist and misogynistic, with a patriarchal outlook that curtails women's rights.
Among others, the actress Jennifer Aniston said on a social media platform that she can't believe such a statement is coming from a potential VP of the United States. "All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day," she wrote.

"I hope she will not need to turn to IVF (in vitro fertilization) as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too," Aniston said, referring to efforts on part of conservative Republican men to legislate and control

reproductive rights

of women.
Female cat owners filled social media with #childlesscatlady hashtags and memes, some of them posting photos of Taylor Swift, a powerful cultural icon, posing with a cat for a magazine cover. “Hell hath no fury like a certain childless cat lady who has yet to endorse a presidential candidate,” read one tweet that has been viewed more than 1 million times.
Although single till she was almost 50, Kamala Harris nurtured the children of her sister Maya Harris, who was a single mom. Following her marriage to Doug Emhoff, Kamala became a step-mom to his two children, Ella and Cole, who call her "momala."
Remarkably, in a further smackdown of the Trump-Vance outlook, Emhoff's ex-wife came out swinging for Kamala, saying she has been a "loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present,” co-parent to the children and “I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”
Meanwhile, female reproductive rights, also referred to as the

abortion

issue, already a hot button subject, has become even more potent after Kamala Harris moved up as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Trump himself attacked Harris on the abortion issue at an election rally on Wednesday, falsely misrepresenting her views, as he did with Hillary Clinton in 2016. "She wants abortions in the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy. That's fine with her, right up until birth and even after birth, the execution of a baby," he said.
Late term abortions are very rare and happen under exceptional circumstances such as severe fetal anomalies, but Trump, MAGA Republicans, and ultraconservatives often talk of "babies being ripped out of the womb" in an effort to demonize Democrats.