Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear suggested Tuesday morning that Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance might gain more empathy for those advocating for abortion access in tragic circumstances if he were to go through a similar ordeal.
The comments sparked outrage from Vance, his campaign and other Republicans. When confronted with that criticism hours later, Beshear said he was not trying to suggest that anyone should suffer harm and called the criticism a “distraction” by Republicans from their position on abortion.
Beshear made the initial comments during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” earlier Tuesday, responding to the Democratic National Convention programming the night before, in which women said they were at risk from their states’ abortion restrictions.
Among the speakers Monday night were Hadley Duvall, a sexual abuse survivor who appeared in an ad for Beshear’s re-election campaign last year, and Beshear himself, who also criticized Vance onstage over abortion rights.
“JD Vance calls pregnancy as a result of rape clumsy. Clumsiness is clumsy, I mean, it’s, uh, putting him through this,” Beshear said during the Tuesday morning interview. “I mean, it’s, someone being violated, someone being harmed and then being told they have no options after that. That fails every test of decency, of humanity.”
The quote Beshear references is from a 2021 podcast interview with Vance.
“Should a woman be forced to carry a child after being a victim of incest or rape?” a Spectrum News reporter asked Vance.
“It is not a question of whether a woman should be forced to give birth to a child. It is a question of whether a child should be allowed to live even if the circumstances of that child’s birth are in some way inconvenient or a problem for society,” he replied.
“For me, the question is really about the baby. We want women to have opportunities. We want women to have choices. But most of all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have the right to life. Right now, our society doesn’t allow that. I think it’s a tragedy and I think we can do better.”
Beshear’s interview on “Morning Joe” drew criticism from former President Donald Trump and the Vance campaign, who took to social media to highlight the clip.
“What the hell is this? Why is [Beshear] wish a member of my family would be raped?!? What a disgusting person,” Vance wrote in a message to X in response.
Speaking to reporters at a Milwaukee airport Thursday afternoon, Vance called Beshear a “complete loser” and his comments “really gross and disgusting.”
“He’s taken on me repeatedly, but this particular instance, targeting my family, really bothered me,” Vance said, before disputing Beshear’s characterization of his 2021 comments.
“I never called rape inconvenient. It’s a total fiction of the Democratic National Committee. I never said it. I never said anything like that. What I was talking about was the context of an unexpected pregnancy, not one caused by rape,” he added.
“Of course rape is a terrible, terrible tragedy and a terrible, terrible thing. I never said what the Democratic Party accused me of saying.”
Beshear faced the first criticism of Vance during an episode of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” Tuesday afternoon. The Kentucky governor responded that “of course” he didn’t mean to imply that anyone in Vance’s family should be harmed, but that the criticism was a “distraction” from his party’s position on abortion rights.
“As a man, JD Vance will never have to experience this personally. But it’s sad that he doesn’t have the empathy to put himself in a different position and understand why having exceptions, reproductive freedom, is so important in the first place,” Beshear said.
“Of course I don’t wish any harm on anyone. It’s just, again, a distraction, trying to victimize himself and Donald Trump.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
