Jennifer Aniston has entered the 2024 election news cycle to call out former US president Donald Trump’s running mate – Hillbilly Elegy author and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance – over his remarks about people who haven’t borne children.
The Emmy-winning Friends star on Wednesday shared her disbelief over a resurfaced clip of the Republican nominee for US vice-president, who in 2021 likened Democrats like Vice-President Kamala Harris to “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made”.
Vance said: “They want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
Posting a tweet about the clip on her Instagram story, the actor wrote: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of the United States.”
The Morning Show star, who opened up about her infertility struggles in 2022, then directed her comments to Vance himself while alluding to the Republican Party’s support of personhood laws that would affect access to abortion, in vitro fertilisation procedures and certain types of contraception.
“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 as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
Representatives for Aniston did not immediately respond on Thursday to a request for comment by the Los Angeles Times.
The senator from Ohio, 39, was a candidate for the US Congress when he made the remarks in 2021 on former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show, but the clip has made the rounds on social media recently in the wake of Trump tapping his one-time critic as his running mate at the Republican National Convention last week.
“It’s just a basic fact – you look at Kamala Harris, [Transport Secretary] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance told Carlson.
After taking aim at Vance, Aniston, 55, appeared to endorse Harris, who stepped into the race Sunday after US President Joe Biden heeded widespread calls to drop out of the election. She reposted a 2018 video from fellow actor Allison Janney showing the former prosecutor and senator grilling Justice Brett Kavanaugh, then a US Supreme Court nominee, on abortion rights.
In a 2022 interview, Aniston provided rare insight into her attempts at parenthood and how the media scrutinised her about not having children during her high-profile marriages to Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux.
“I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” she told Allure. “All the years and years and years of speculation … It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”
Aniston said that the media painfully labelled her as “selfish” and someone who “just cared about her career”.
“God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child,” she said. “And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn’t give him a kid. It was absolute lies.”
Meanwhile, Harris’ stepdaughter Ella Emhoff and Ella’s mother, Kerstin Emhoff, came to Harris’ defence.
Ella Emhoff posted a statement her mother had given to CNN on her Instagram story on Thursday. In it, Kerstin Emhoff called the “childless” claims against Harris “baseless” and praised Harris as a “co-parent” to her two children with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
“She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present,” the statement said.
Ella Emhoff added: “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like cole and I. @kemhoff say it louder for the people in the back … I love my three parents.”
