Biden abortion ad marks a campaign shift to emphasize reproductive rights
Biden’s reelection campaign launched a new campaign ad on Sunday, signaling a shift in emphasis to reproductive rights that the White House hopes Democrats will implement and define during the 2024 election cycle.
The campaign ad, titled Forcedis intended to directly link Donald Trump to the abortion issue, nearly 18 months after his Supreme Court nominees helped overturn a constitutional right to abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade that would have turned 51 this week.
Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas gynecologist and mother of three, tells the camera her story about traveling from her state to terminate her pregnancy after learning her fetus had a fatal condition. She called her situation “every woman’s worst nightmare”.
In Texas, she said, her choice was “completely taken away and that’s because Donald Trump overturned Roe v Wade.”
The launch of the ad comes as anti-abortion activists descended on Washington DC this weekend. At one event, the National Pro-Life Summit, activists came to celebrate anti-abortion activism in the US. At another, the March for Life, protesters called for advocacy against abortion rights.
Vice President Kamala Harris is now being pushed to the forefront of the administration’s messaging on reproductive rights, a position Biden says he doesn’t consider “great” because of his Catholic faith, though he believes the historic 1973 decision was “the right call taken’. .
On Monday, Harris will embark on a nationwide tour to draw attention to the administration’s efforts to protect women’s right to choose. Her tour begins in Wisconsin, where abortion rights delivered a Democratic victory in a key election for the state Supreme Court.
A statement from Harris’ office said the vice president will “highlight the harm caused by extreme abortion bans and share stories of those affected in Wisconsin and across the country.”
“She will also hold extremists accountable for proposing a national abortion ban, call on Congress to restore Roe’s protections and outline steps the administration is taking to protect access to health care,” the statement said.
Democrats hope to emphasize this year that a second Trump presidency would mean new personal health restrictions.
“Donald Trump is the reason more than 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age do not have the freedom to make their own health care decisions. Now he and MAGA Republicans are racing to go even further as they retake the White House,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden-Harris 2024 campaign manager, said in a statement to The Hill.
On Sunday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer told CBS Face the Nation that “it would be good” if Biden talked about abortion more than he did. “I know that one of the tenets of his belief system is that women, and only women with their families and health care professionals, are the ones who know which decision is right for them.”
Asked whether the president should take that message more forcefully, Whitmer said: “I don’t think it would hurt. “I think people want to know that this is a president who fights…but maybe it would be helpful to use more blunt language.”