For all his success, J.D. Vance’s vice presidential debate performance suffered from one weakness: his abortion position. Vance, who had long been an outspoken defender of children conceived in “the difficult cases” of rape and incest, began modifying his position as Donald Trump began considering him as his running mate — and his over-modulated response attracted heavy criticism. Live Action founder Lila Rose found Vance’s abortion answer “sad and disappointing,” because it “furthered the false narrative that killing a baby, because the baby’s father is abusive, is somehow good for women.”

However, even while comporting himself with Trump’s national neutrality policy on abortion, Vance made a few important distinctions that deserve the notice, and praise, of the pro-life movement.

The ‘National Abortion Ban’ vs. a ‘Minimum National Standard’

The Left has repeatedly raised the alarm that, their insistent promises notwithstanding, Trump and Vance are secretly plotting to sign “a national abortion ban” once in office. The abortion industry, Democrats, and their fellow travelers in the media, have continually conflated the 15-week protection with a “national abortion ban” — and all-too-frequently, Republicans have let them get away with it.

Debate moderator Norah O’Donnell raised Vance’s alleged support for “a national ban” on abortion, later specifying she meant “a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks.” To his credit, Vance stood his ground and properly pointed out the cavernous gulf between Democrats’ rhetoric and Republican reality.

“I never supported a national ban. I did, when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard” to protect life, Vance told O’Donnell. “For example, we have a partial-birth abortion ban in place in this country at the federal level.” Vance voiced similar nuances during his 2022 debate with former pro-life Democrat Tim Ryan, when he said that, while states may “have different abortion laws” after the Dobbs decision, he felt that protecting human life after 15 weeks represented a reasonable “minimum national standard.”

That’s an important distinction for two reasons. First, Vance skewered the legacy media’s misleading coverage of an entirely reasonable, and too-modest, pro-life protection. Vance backed the “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions” Act (H.R.8814) introduced by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), which would have made an abortionist who carried out an abortion after 15 weeks (well into the second trimester) face up to five years in prison and a civil lawsuit from the pregnant woman, or the parents of a minor girl, who underwent the illegal abortion. Post-abortive women would not be punished.

More to the point, it impacts only a minuscule number of abortions. Only 6% of all abortions take place after 15 weeks gestation, and the bill allowed abortions after that point for children conceived in rape or incest. State data compiled by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute finds just 0.4% of all abortions are due to rape or incest, while the Guttmacher Institute (formerly an affiliate of Planned Parenthood) placed that number at less than 1.5%. (Although Guttmacher did not measure the number of women who faced life-threatening complications, it reported that 7% of abortive mothers cited health concerns, ranging from potential death to morning sickness. State-level data placed serious health risks at 0.3% of abortions; all maternal and infant health concerns totaled 3.7% of abortions.)

In all, protecting life after 15 weeks would allow between 94% and 96% of all abortions nationwide to take place. The “national abortion ban” would prevent only 4% to 6% of abortions. Graham’s bill “still includes 96% of all abortions, so it may be a starting point, but it’s not an end point,” noted Ryan Bomberger, the founder and chief creative officer of The Radiance Foundation, at the opening panel of the 2022 Pray Vote Stand Summit in Atlanta.

A bill that allows 96% of abortions to take effect is only a “national abortion ban” in Planned Parenthood press releases. Any media outlet seeking to educate its audience about the bill’s content rather than repeating Democratic talking points would make clear the bill’s extraordinarily modest impact, a policy which would be supported by a majority of Americans. Americans of all stripes should thank Vance for asserting that words have meaning.

Vance’s distinction is pivotal for a second reason: It walks the current Republican Party leadership back from its hostility to all federal pro-life protections, ratchets down the GOP’s demoralization of its voter base, and opens the door to a President Vance signing incremental pro-life legislation in 2029. Or, if he were wise enough to listen to his veep, President Trump could sign such a bill in three months’ time. Trump has vociferously promised to veto a “national abortion ban,” but he could adopt Vance’s differentiation between a “ban” and a “minimum standard.” Pro-life advocates should make every effort to assure that he does so.

J.D. Vance, known for his eloquent memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” has supplied the vocabulary a second Trump administration can adopt to advance the cause of life.