Jennifer Aniston took to social media recently and slammed JD Vance over his controversial comments about women with no children. Aniston shared an Instagram Story on Friday featuring a shot of Vance appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, sometimes looking incredulous at such remarks coming from someone who wants to be Vice President of the United States. In an interview in 2021, Ohio Senate candidate Vance called the country “childless cat ladies.” America is made miserable because all of these childless cat ladies who are ruling the nation are unhappy and without children, he said. He called out Democrats like Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as people who, by his definition, had no direct stake in the country’s future because they did not have children.
Aniston responded in a deeply personal, pointed way: She knocked Vance on reproductive rights, in talking about her fertility. Aniston wrote in the caption of her Instagram post, “I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to have children of her own one day,” which was riddled with undertones that Vance’s beliefs would eventually set up roadblocks for fertility treatments, including IVF. The chiding comes at a time when the politics on reproductive health are very strong, with elections weeks away and women weighing in, even from Hollywood, to show support for reproductive rights.
Vance’s sister, Lindsay Lewis, took to her brother’s defense in response to comments made by Aniston regarding the powerful women in Vance’s life. She said very clearly that the press had lied about what he had said and the response to him was “vile.” In this respect, the response underlines personal and family dimensions in the public debate over Vance’s remarks.
Aniston’s criticism, hence, agrees even with her personal life. In the 2022 Allure interview, she did speak out against her personal struggle with fertility and the emotional damage from tabloid guesswork related to love life. She does recall hurting from the “selfish” narrative—from chancing upon magazine covers indicating that she had decided to be career-driven as opposed to raising children—which hurt her.
She also showed support for Kamala Harris by resharing a video of her grilling Brett Kavanaugh on abortion rights. In doing so, Aniston aligns with Harris on reproductive health and further cements herself against bans on the potential access to fertility treatments available for women.
Jennifer Aniston’s public critique of JD Vance attempted to personalize her experience with the broad reproductive rights concern. Her response, underlined by fertility and women’s health debates, which individually advance subjective dimensions in the argument about the role of personal choice in public policy, was set.
