‘I Was a Childless Cat Lady’: Women Respond to JD Vance

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The selection of Senator JD Vance of Ohio as former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate was supposed to appeal to women, voters of color and blue-collar voters, but a stream of years-old comments has threatened to undermine that.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Past Comments Fluster Vance as Democrats Go on Offense” (front page, July 29):

JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said in 2021, “We’re effectively run, in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

I would say this to Mr. Vance:

I was a childless cat lady: three cats, no kids.

I thought fertility was a given. There was no medical reason I couldn’t have children. Yet it did not happen. Three cats. A great career. No kids.

I was, in effect at 38, a “childless cat lady.”

I pursued fertility treatments. Treatments that many Republicans want to ban.

I had painful tests, surgeries, running to the lab — five vials of blood drawn every day at 6 a.m. — then rushing to work for a minimum 12-hour day.

Childless cat lady lawyer. Meow.

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I had one fabulous child at 38 with I.V.F. She was a triplet, but I lost my daughter’s siblings.

I was pregnant three other times. I lost two other babies at four months. I needed a D and C: same procedure as an abortion. If I didn’t have the surgery, I would have died.