Vance once endorsed conservative family agenda from Project 2025 authors

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

JD Vance, the right-wing Ohio Senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, once called a collection of essays from conservative individuals that touted anti-abortion, pro-heterosexuality, anti-affordable housing and pro-restrictive sexual freedom ideals “admirable.”

In 2017, Vance wrote the introduction to a 106-page index published by The Heritage Foundation that advocated for conservative views that are noticeably reflected in its better-known document Project 2025.

The document called the Index of Culture and Opportunity is a collection of roughly 30 essays from people – two of whom went on to help author Project 2025 – that advocate for a two-parent household of a mother and father, more church involvement, restricting access to abortion, women getting pregnant at a younger age, getting rid of government benefits like affordable housing or welfare and more.

“This volume is admirable both for its willingness to house culture and opportunity under the same intellectual roof and for its effort to quantify and analyze both,” Vance wrote in the introduction.

At the time, Vance was rising to fame thanks to his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy and praised the index for addressing issues that he mentioned in his book like living in a low-income household, witnessing drug addiction and coming from a “broken” home.

He also praised Donald Trump – who at the time had just taken office – for running a campaign that would unite the index’s suggestions with policy.

Some of those suggestions include encouraging women to have children at a younger age by putting a stop to “children born from high-tech pregnancies” and “women who are exploited for their healthy reproductive capacities” –  a roundabout way of saying IVF and surrogacy.

One section encourages states to draft laws that restrict access to abortion in any way they can (this was written pre-Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade) and people to continue marching for life until abortion “has become unthinkable.”

A spokesperson for Vance said in a statement, “Senator Vance has long made clear that he supports IVF and does not agree with every opinion in this seven-year-old report, which features a range of unique views from dozens of conservative thinkers. He had no role in editing the report and outside of his own contribution, did not have any input on the commentary throughout.”

One author penned an entire essay over concerns that “many boys – whether black or white – do not play baseball because they have no father to teach the game.” In that, the author says more fathers need to be present and children of single-parent families should be aware that their lives could be “invariable harder” with a parent missing.

Sections of the index claim that two-parent households, consisting of a mother and father, are the “ideal situation” for any child to grow up.

On the same note, authors claim that welfare benefits, subsidized housing and food stamps all encourage people to live on government aid rather than seek work or housing.

“The greatest weapon against poverty is not welfare. Rather, it is the establishment of strong families with a father and mother living under the same roof, raising their children together and allowing those children to have a choice in where to attend school,” Cal Thomas wrote in the index.

This conservative agenda laid out in 2017, which Vance praised, has the early markings of what would become Project 2025 – the Heritage Foundation’s proposed plan for the next Republican president to implement.

Although Trump has tried to put distance between himself and Project 2025, his running mate has a history of praising and supporting some of the suggestions laid out in it.