'Women are not stupid': Critics respond to Vance claim about Trump

Sen. Elizabeth Warren responded forcefully to Sen. JD Vance on Sunday after the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that Donald Trump—who has repeatedly celebrated and taken credit for the Supreme Court decision that revoked abortion rights at the federal level—would veto legislation imposing a nationwide abortion ban if it reached his desk.

"American women are not stupid and we are not going to trust the futures of our daughters and granddaughters to two men who have openly bragged about blocking access to abortion for women all across this country," Warren (D-Mass.) toldNBC News' Kristen Welker.

The Democratic senator went on to warn that if Trump and Vance win in November, their administration could wield a 151-year-old zombie statute known as the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide, without even needing congressional approval.

Last year, Vance joined dozens of Republican lawmakers in calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to enforce the long-dormant Comstock Act and "shut down all mail-order abortion operations."

"Right now, where we are is Donald Trump and JD Vance take the White House, they have current law, the Comstock Act which, with the right person that they put into the Department of Justice and one of their extremist judges out in the world, they can actually ban all access to abortion all across this country," Warren said Sunday. "So for any woman who's in the middle of a miscarriage who goes into an emergency room and discovers there's no medication and no treatment for her because abortion has been banned nationwide, they can thank Donald Trump and JD Vance."

Warren's comments came after Vance told Welker in an interview that aired Sunday that he believes Trump would veto a federal abortion ban if such a measure passed Congress.

"He said that explicitly that he would," Vance said.

But Welker pushed back, replying: "I don't think he's ever said explicitly that he would. He's said that to you?"

Vance did not respond directly to Welker's follow-up.

Trump said in April that, if reelected, he would do nothing to stop states from imposing draconian bans on abortion, saying they should be allowed to do "whatever they decide."

While the former president stopped short of supporting a federal abortion ban, Trump boasted that he was "proudly the person responsible" for ending Roe v. Wade, which was overturned by a right-wing Supreme Court supermajority that includes three Trump-appointed justices.

When he was president, Trump urged the U.S. Senate to pass legislation banning abortion at the federal level after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Warren noted Sunday that with Roe overturned, 30% of women in the U.S. "live in states that effectively ban abortion."

"Donald Trump and JD Vance in the White House, it won't be 30%, it will be 100%," Warren said. "The only way that we're going to protect access to abortion is to have a Democratic Congress, send a bill to Kamala Harris, she will sign it into law, and then we will restore a right to half the population in this country. And no longer will a woman have to go into an emergency room and be told she's not near enough death to get the medical treatment that she needs."