Biden campaign ad targets Trump on abortion
President Biden’s campaign will release a new ad Monday that takes direct aim at former President Donald J. Trump’s abortion policies, a campaign official said were largely responsible for the end of Roe v. Wade.
The ad, which will air on digital television in key states, is part of the $50 million campaign in July.
In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised to appoint multiple anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court, with the goal of overturning Roe. When the court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson ended the constitutional right to abortion, Trump took the honors.
The ad, titled “Her Own” and obtained by The New York Times, quotes Trump during last month’s presidential debate with Biden saying “it’s wonderful” that the judges he appointed helped overturn Roe.
“Ask yourself: Who do you want in the White House? The man who takes pride in overturning Roe v. Wade, or the president who fights for your rights?” the ad’s narrator says.
Social conservatives have long sought tougher restrictions on abortion nationwide, but such measures have been a losing issue for Republicans in federal, state and local elections since 2022. Mr. Trump has also sought to be less restrictive on abortion, saying during the debate that he hoped to see individual states decide on abortion rights rather than a nationwide ban.
The ad aims to address one of Mr. Biden’s weaknesses in the debate, when he gave a muddled answer to the issue, and he has since used campaign speeches to double down on his pledge to restore Roe v. Wade if re-elected, one of the most enduring policy promises of his campaign.
Mr. Biden’s campaign, facing intense scrutiny after his debate performance, has tried to keep the focus on Mr. Trump. It has launched social media posts, a website and ads about Mr. Trump and Project 2025, a Republican policy handbook compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and like-minded groups. The handbook proposes a radical overhaul of the federal government, including a rejection of abortion as health care.
The Biden camp’s push focuses on how a second Trump term would significantly curtail freedoms. Project 2025 is not part of Trump’s campaign platform, and he claimed last week that he had no knowledge of the project. But the project was written or supported by a number of close Trump allies and former Trump administration officials, some of whom work for the former president.
“If re-elected, Trump will go even further — punishing women who have abortions, banning abortions nationwide, and carrying out the rest of the extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Lauren Hitt, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said in a statement, adding that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris stood between women and “Trump’s vicious attacks on reproductive health care.”
