Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is out with a new ad featuring women at various stages throughout U.S. history, along with former President Donald Trump’s own words explaining how the Supreme Court Justices he appointed helped overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
The ad, entitled “Her own” in reference to a woman’s right to choose, quotes Trump from the first presidential debate last month responding to questions about reproductive rights.
“And what I did is, I put three great Supreme Court Justices on the Court, and they happened to vote in favor of killing Roe v. Wade. It’s been a great thing,” Trump says in the ad.
It doesn’t include Biden’s response during the debate, which began with him punching back that the decision was, in fact, not a great thing, but ended in one of several wandering musings that prompted widespread panic among entrenched Democrats.
Instead, the ad relies on a female narrator who opens the ad noting that “Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, ensuring a woman could. make her own health care decisions” for nearly a half century. After the clip of Trump explaining how the decision was overturned, the narrator continues.
“Ask yourself, who do you want in the White House: The man proud to overturn Roe v. Wade, or the President fighting for your rights?”
The ad then ends with Biden’s voice approving the message.
But perhaps even more powerful than the narrative in the ad are the visuals. It opens with a dated photo of a woman, which appears to be from the 50s or early 60s, carrying an infant.
Other images then flash — a woman hugging a toddler, a young woman graduating, a woman holding her newborn in a hospital bed, a more modern photo of a woman with her young daughter lying on a lawn, and then a still of a young woman staring into the camera. The unspoken message through the images is clear: The women had a choice.
“Donald Trump brags that ‘killing Roe v. Wade’ has been ‘a great thing.’ So, let’s take a closer look at what Donald Trump thinks is ‘great’: a ten-year-old rape victim had to leave her home in Ohio and travel several hours to Indianapolis in order to receive an abortion. A Texas woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of an emergency room after front desk staff were too scared to admit her. OBGYNs fled Idaho for fear of being prosecuted under the state’s extreme abortion ban,” Biden campaign senior spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in a statement about the ad.
“If Trump is reelected, he will go even further — punishing women who receive an abortion, banning abortion nationwide, and carrying out the rest of the extreme Project 2025 agenda. The only thing standing between American women and Trump’s cruel attacks on reproductive health care is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
A press release announcing the ad, which will run in all battleground states including North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, ties Trump’s positions to the controversial Project 2025. That’s a blueprint for a next GOP presidential administration created by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and its conservative allies, many with close ties to Trump. It includes priorities such as banning abortion nationwide, eliminating certain federal departments and consolidating executive power.
The latest ad is part of a $50 million ad buy. It will target voters during high viewership moments, such as during “The Bachelorette” season premier, the Olympic Games and the Republican National Convention.
The ad comes as the Biden campaign continues to run damage control after the debate last month, with calls continuing to trickle in for Biden to leave the race, perhaps passing the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, though there have been Democratic leaders who have stood firm behind the President.
Tuesday is expected to potentially be a big day in the determination of Biden’s political future, with at least one member of Congress present at a virtual meeting Sunday reporting that’s when the “dam will break,” referring to Democrats on Capitol Hill coming out publicly with statements about the next steps they believe Biden should take.
For his part, Biden has so far vowed to stay in the race and, in a letter to Democrats in Congress, asked for unity behind the Biden-(Kamala) Harris ticket.
Still, the campaign has been exceedingly active as a result of the noise, with the opening of a new battleground office in Georgia, an ad blasting the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Trump’s presidential immunity as creating “a king above the law,” and an extended digital advertisement in the Atlanta Journal Constitution painting Trump as “a threat to our democracy.”
Biden has also kept a busy campaign schedule with stops in Pennsylvania and other battleground states. On Monday, he called into “Morning Joe” on MSNBC to again declare that he was not leaving the race.
