JD Vance thinks my vote should count less. He should listen to Jennifer Aniston.

Amelia Robinson is The Columbus Dispatch's opinion and community engagement editor.

U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and his disdain for the childless — cat ladies in particular — has me thinking about actress Jennifer Aniston and the two things America's first president and I have in common.

Vance's supporters say his words at the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 2021 were taken out of context, but they are not. He said what he said.

“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power,” the Republican nominee for vice president said according to the Washington Post and a resurfaced video posted on X, formerly Twitter. “You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”

Like George Washington, I am childless. Like George Washington, I am invested in this nation's future.

I am not sure when George Washington accepted he'd never have children of his own, but the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon has records that indicate it was something that eventually happened.

I don't know exactly when I completely accepted the fact either.

The roller coaster that was my infertility hit its last hill eight years ago when an ultrasound revealed 70 fibroid tumors in my uterus. My kind and compassionate fertility doctor urged me to get a hysterectomy immediately, worrying that the sheer number may have indicated a rare cancer. It thankfully did not.

I speak so freely about infertility, a subject once never spoke about in polite society, for four simple reasons.

1. It was a medical issue.

2. There's nothing taboo about the female body.

3. Men like Vance have made it their business to control women's reproduction while criticizing women who can't or don't want to reproduce.

4. Silence is deadly.

I am a selfish, childless cat lady

It seems I am your typical childless cat lady.

According to James David Vance, a deadbeat dad’s vote should count more than mine.

I feed, pet and love my cats, Tigger and Lil Bebe Num Num, but that's far from all I do. In JD Vance's world, all the other things I do don't matter.

I pay my taxes, obey the law, love the children in my life — those related by blood and not — but would have reduced political power on Vance's sliding scale because I wasn't able to reproduce.

Vance called Harris childless cat lady. Where does he stand on family issues?

Hillbilly Elegy? Papaw played banjo in the holler. I know hillbillies. Vance didn't tell Appalachia's story.

That last part about being able to reproduce is not exactly true.

I could have had children before I was married and started earning enough money to take care of myself.

That would have made me a single mom, a state looked down upon by men like Vance. I saw how hard my single mother worked to give my brother and I a better life.

I watched and still watch family members struggle to raise children on their own. I wanted a partner to help carry the load. How selfish of me.

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Sure, my husband and I could have begged, borrowed and stole after my hysterectomy to hire a surrogate and use IVF. That, of course would, have been looked down upon by the segment of the Republican Party whose anti-abortion campaign has made access to in-vitro fertilization more challenging.

The expense and the potential heartbreak were more than I could imagine bearing. How selfish of me.

Jennifer Aniston and John Tyler's 15 children

None of this is an easy road, as actress Jennifer Aniston pointed out on Instagram about Vance's cat lady comments.

"I truly can't believe this is coming from a potential VP of the United States," she wrote. "All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too."

Vance needs to read that over and over again until it sinks in.

Like Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic party's presumptive presidential nominee and apparent queen of all childless cat ladies, George Washington had stepchildren.

No one's really talking about men and when and if they choose to have children, but humor me for a bit.

President James Madison, the so-called "Father of the Constitution," didn't have any children. John Tyler, considered by experts to be one of the worst U.S. presidents in history, had 15 children.

Guess Vance would have given him 16 votes.

Vance's clarification makes it worse

During that Intercollegiate Studies Institute speech, he attempted to make it clear that he was not talking about everyone. That made it all the more offensive.

"A lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons," Vance said. "There are people of course for biological reasons, medical reasons that can't have children. The target of these remarks is not them.”

Who, exactly, gets to determine what are "very complicated and important reasons?" The abortion debate makes it clear that a medical reason is not a good enough reason to have control over your own body.

The implication is that a person — females who own cats in particular — are valueless if they are not fruitful and multiply the moment they are physically able to conceive. What a reckless world view.

How exactly would JD Vance determine whose reasons are valid?

Would a committee decide who is valuable? Who would pick the committee?

Harris' stepchildren famously call her 'Momala.' Would she get an extra half vote for that?

My husband and I could still adopt. But that apparently would have not been enough in Vance's world. The child apparently has to be made with your genes or it isn't really your child.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband announced they'd adopted two kids within weeks of Vance's 2021 interview.

How many votes would Vance give adopted and foster parents if any? Would mentoring children get you an eighth of a vote?

Would my husband and I get bonus votes for every disappointing doctor visit? Would we get votes taken away because we waited a year or so after getting married to try to have a kid?

Would I get 70 votes for each of the 70 tumors I carried for months and months of agony and uncertainty?

That's as a ridiculous notion as Vance's hurtful remarks.

My cats are disappointed in JD Vance

From Vance's cat lady comments, it seems owning cats would take voting power away.

"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," Vance said during a resurfaced July 2021 conversation with Tucker Carlson on Fox News. "It's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY), the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children."

Vance has apparently never met a cat lady but should.

The cat ladies and cat daddies — those with and without children — I know are far from miserable. Most have claws and vote.

I can imagine George Washington had a barn cat or two, but purr-haps he didn't consider them pets.

He and Martha were bird and dog people. In fact, the American Kennel Club considers George Washington as the father of the American foxhound.

I am a childless cat lady, but I respect Martha and George's decision to love dogs, birds and her biological children and grandchildren.

They had a right to their choice.

Who is JD Vance or any other person to judge why they made that choice or why that choice was made for them?

Amelia Robinson is The Columbus Dispatch's opinion editor.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Jennifer Aniston and JD Vance on childless cat ladies makes a point