Gwen Walz slammed JD Vance for his past comments about teachers and IVF, using her “teacher voice” to tell him to “mind his own business.”
Walz, the wife of Harris’ running mate Tim Walz, spoke at her first solo campaign event, a forum with teachers in Virginia.
“We don’t like people like JD Vance telling us when and how to start a family,” she said Friday.
Then Walz, an English teacher, picked up her glasses and placed them on the edge of her nose.
“Let me use my teacher’s voice then,” she said. “Mr. Vance, would you mind your own business?”
The crowd cheered.
Speaking at her first solo campaign event, Gwen Walz said, “We don’t like people like J.D. Vance telling us when or how to have a family.”
Tim, 60, and Gwen Walz, 58, have spoken openly about their fertility struggles and how they used fertility treatments to conceive two children.
The Walzes used a procedure known as intrauterine insemination, or IUI. IUI is often attempted before IVF, but it does not face the same level of political controversy because it does not risk destroying unused embryos, which anti-abortion activists say are tantamount to unborn children.
“JD Vance said he really gets bothered by teachers who don’t have good biological children,” Gwen Walz noted.
‘Tim and I were teachers and struggled with infertility. It was only through fertility treatments that we were able to start a family.’
“We don’t like people like JD Vance telling us when and how to start a family,” she added.
A few days ago, it was revealed in recently surfaced statements that Vance attacked teachers who don’t have children.
Speaking at a 2021 forum for the Center for Christian Virtue, Vance attacked Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, for not having children.
“There are so many leaders of the left, and I don’t want to make it so personal, but it’s people without children who are trying to brainwash the minds of our children. That disorients and disturbs me enormously,” he said at the time.
“Randi Weingarten, who is the head of the most powerful teachers union in the country, doesn’t have any children. If she wants to brainwash and destroy children’s brains, she should have some of her own and leave ours alone.”
Vance recently criticized the Walz family for their fertility treatments.
“If it were up to him, I wouldn’t have a family anymore thanks to IVF,” he said in early August.
Vance also called Tim Walz a liar for saying the family used IVF instead of IUI. Vance voted against Democratic legislation to protect IVF.
“Today it came out that Tim Walz lied about starting a family through IVF. Who lies about something like that?” Vance wrote on social media.
A spokesman for Walz said he used “commonly known abbreviations for fertility treatments.”
IUI involves placing a partner’s or donor’s sperm into the uterus at the time of ovulation. IVF involves removing a woman’s eggs from her body, combining them with sperm, and then placing them back into her uterus.
Fertility treatments are a very personal experience for couples and both treatments can be physically and emotionally stressful.
JD Vance has come under fire for his comments about families
Vance has been criticized for his comments about families, especially when he mocked “childless cat ladies.”
Later he said he was joking.
He and other Republicans, on the other hand, have tried to poke holes in Tim Walz’s biography, particularly his military record. Attacks on the VP candidate over fertility treatments were part of that effort.
Gwen Walz said during her event on Friday that Donald Trump is trying to rewrite his policies on reproductive rights.
She noted that teachers believe in telling the truth.
“So these are the facts and there is no alternative to them,” she said. “Donald Trump is the one who overturned Roe and jeopardized access to IVF. That’s a fact. And he’s campaigning on a platform that jeopardizes these treatments nationwide and that’s a fact.”
Democrats are attacking Trump over his record on reproductive rights. It was a major issue for them in the 2022 midterm elections, driving many voters, particularly women, to the polls.
On Friday, Harris’ campaign kicked off a Reproductive Freedom Bus tour of states where the fight for reproductive freedom matters.