The Biden campaign will hit the airwaves in battleground states with its first abortion-focused ad of the year, featuring stark, emotional testimony from a woman personally affected by a state abortion ban who lays the blame directly on former President Donald Trump.
It comes as the campaign is launching a full-court press this week to put abortion rights front and center in the 2024 race, including with events headlined by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The push marks the campaign’s first organized effort to emphasize the issue, seeking to further galvanize voters around reproductive rights in the first presidential election after the Supreme Court ended the federal constitutional right to an abortion.
The minutelong ad, titled “Forced” and shared first with CNN, features an emotional direct-to-camera testimonial from Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN and mother who traveled out of her state, which has a strict abortion ban, to terminate her pregnancy after learning her fetus had a fatal condition. Dennard calls the situation “every woman’s worst nightmare” and criticizes Trump for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The former president has taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade due to the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court, recently saying in a Fox News town hall, “For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I’m proud to have done it.”
“Two years ago, I became pregnant with a baby I desperately wanted,” Dennard says in the ad. “At a routine ultrasound, I learned that the fetus would have a fatal condition and that there was absolutely no chance of survival.
“In Texas you are forced to carry that pregnancy, and that is because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade,” Dennard says as an image of Trump flashes across the screen. “The choice was completely taken away.”
Biden campaign officials hope stories like Dennard’s will resonate with voters heading into November’s election as the campaign looks to stress Trump and other Republicans have worked to limit reproductive rights. Democrats saw success around the issue of abortion in the 2022 midterms and other recent elections, which the Biden campaign hopes to replicate in 2024.
