Less than a week after being sworn in as Donald Trump’s vice-president, former U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio told a National March for Life rally by the Washington Monument that the new administration stands “with you, and most importantly we stand with the most vulnerable.”
“I want more babies in the United States of America,” the Cincinnati Republican said in his first public address as vice president. “I want more happy children in our country and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.”
Speaking at the yearly anti-abortion rally after videotaped remarks from Trump, Vance took to the stage on the National Mall to shrieks and chants of “JD,” from a crowd that waved signs with messages such as “Defund Planned Parenthood,” “Choose Love, Choose Life,” “I am the ProLife Generation.”
Vance praised Trump for installing anti-abortion federal judges and U.S. Supreme Court justices, and for increasing the Child Tax Credit during his first administration. He said the U.S. government should “make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids, to bring them into the world and to welcome them as the blessings that we know they are.”
“It should be easier, easier to raise a family, easier to find a good job, easier to build a home to raise that family in, easier to save up and purchase a good stroller, a crib for a nursery,” said Vance, who has three small children. “We need a culture that celebrates life at all stages, one that recognizes and truly believes that the benchmark of national success is not our GDP number or our stock market, but whether people feel that they can raise thriving and healthy families in our country.”
Since being sworn in as vice-president on Monday, Vance introduced Trump at several inauguration day appearances. He’s moved into the official vice-presidential residence on the Naval Observatory grounds, sworn in Trump cabinet members as they’re confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and sworn in his own replacement in the Senate, former Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted of the Columbus area.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told the rally that having Vance and Trump in the White House represents a “new era,” noting that one of Trump’s first official acts was to issue pardons to “nearly two dozen wrongfully imprisoned pro-life activists.”
“Together, we are rebuilding a culture of life, and it begins now,” said Johnson, a Louisiana Republican.
He said Trump’s executive order calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female defines life as beginning as conception, rather than birth. He also touted legislation called the “Born Alive Survivors Protection Act,” that passed the House of Representatives earlier this week in a 217 to 204 vote, but lacked enough support to pass the Senate.
All Ohio Republicans voted for the bill, which would “prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.” All Ohio Democrats voted against it. Democrats said medical providers are already required to provide that care and the bill’s goal is actually to “target and intimidate reproductive health care providers and make it harder for women to access vital health care,” as Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin put it.
The March for Life has been held every January since 1973, to mark the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision inRoe v. Wade, established the right to an abortion until fetal viability. It continued even after the court’s 2022 finding in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.
Other speakers at the rally included Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and professional surfer Bethany Hamilton, who lost her left arm to a 14-foot tiger shark. U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, a Bowling Green Republican, appeared on the rally stage but did not speak.
Last modified: January 28, 2025
