EXCLUSIVE — The Democratic National Committee is criticizing Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) for fundraising with a Florida lawmaker who helped pass the state’s abortion law.
The attacks coincide with Vice President Kamala Harris‘s campaign and other Democrats attempting to undermine former President Donald Trump on the issue of reproductive healthcare before the election as Trump himself announced Thursday he supports providing free access to in vitro fertilization.
“Donald Trump may be trying to hide his extreme Project 2025 agenda to outlaw abortion in Florida and across the country, but J.D. Vance is making the Trump-Vance ticket’s anti-choice extremism clear,” DNC spokeswoman Aida Ross told the Washington Examiner. “Trump and Vance’s dangerous anti-choice plans may be popular with their out-of-touch donors, but they’ll be a clear loser with voters at the ballot box this November.”
Trump and his campaign have repeatedly distanced themselves from conservative think tank Heritage Foundation‘s Project 2025 proposals.
The Florida lawmaker is Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, who hosted a roundtable discussion fundraiser with Vance in Dade City on Thursday, tickets for which cost $50,000 per person, according to reports.
Simpson was the president of Florida’s Senate in 2022 before he became commissioner last year, when the chamber passed a law restricting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to sign.
“I think it’s a great day,” Simpson said at the time. “After 15 weeks, that is a child. And so the argument is, should you kill a baby after 15 weeks because it was [conceived] under certain circumstances?”
Simpson, the Trump campaign, and the Republican National Committee did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.
Last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago underscored the party’s desire to retain its strategies regarding abortion that it has adopted since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, undercutting Republicans as “extreme” for being against the procedure.
During a rally in Savannah, Georgia, on Thursday, Harris recycled a line from her convention address about Republican tactics to curtail abortions.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Simply put, they are out of their minds. Why don’t they trust women? We trust women,” she told the crowd.
Almost at the same time during a rally in Potterville, Michigan, Trump told his audience that the “government” will pay “or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for all costs associated with IVF treatment” under his second hypothetical administration.
“We want more babies to put it very nicely,” he said.
The Harris campaign has scrutinized Trump’s promise, claiming the Republican platform passed at his party’s convention last month in Milwaukee endorsed “fetal personhood,” which it says could jeopardize IVF.
Florida’s abortion law will be on the state’s ballot in two months after activists gathered enough signatures for an initiated constitutional amendment, which would enshrine the process in its declaration of rights.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser complained Thursday that Trump told NBC he planned “to be voting that we need more than six weeks.” In a statement, Dannenfelser wrote that Trump told her earlier in the evening he “has not committed to how he will vote on Amendment 4.”
“President Trump has consistently opposed abortions after five months of pregnancy,” Dannenfelser added. “Amendment 4 would allow abortion past this point. Voting for Amendment 4 completely undermines his position.”
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Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt countered, “President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.”
Trump rankled anti-abortion stakeholders last week after he told CBS that he would not rely on the Comstock Act to prohibit the postage of abortion pills. Vance then told NBC that Trump would veto a federal ban.
