President Biden's campaign will release a new ad Monday directly criticizing former President Donald J. Trump's abortion policies and arguing that he is primarily responsible for ending Roe v. Wade, a campaign official said.
The ad will air on digital television in battleground states and is part of the campaign's $50 million advertising campaign in July.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump pledged to appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court with the goal of overturning Roe, and bragged about the achievement when the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion in 2022 with Dobbs v. Jackson.
The ad, titled “Her Own,” obtained by The New York Times, quotes Trump from last month's presidential debate with Biden saying, “It's a great thing that the judges that I appointed helped overturn Roe.”
“Ask yourself: who do you want in the White House? Someone who's proud of overturning Roe v. Wade, or a president who will fight for your rights?” the ad's narrator says.
Social conservatives have long called for stricter restrictions on abortion nationwide, but such measures have cost Republicans losses in federal, state and local elections since 2022. Trump has also sought to take a more cautious stance on abortion, saying during the debate that he would like states to decide on abortion rights rather than a nationwide ban.
The ad was aimed at addressing one of Biden's weaknesses, when he gave vague answers on the issue during the debates, and he has since repeated a promise in campaign speeches to restore Roe v. Wade if re-elected, one of the campaign's most enduring policy pledges.
Biden's campaign, under intense scrutiny after his debate performance, has sought to shift the spotlight to Trump, promoting him in social media posts, on its website and in ads as well as Project 2025, a Republican policy guide put together by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and allies that proposes sweeping reforms to the federal government, including rejecting the idea of ​​abortion as medical care.
The Biden campaign's argument has focused on how a second term for Trump would significantly restrict freedoms. Project 2025 was not part of Trump's campaign platform, and Trump claimed last week that he had no knowledge of the project. But it was created or backed by Trump aides and former Trump administration officials, some of whom worked for the former president.
“If re-elected, Trump will punish women who get abortions, ban abortion across the country, and implement the rest of his extreme Project 2025 policies,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement, adding that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris stand between women and “Trump's brutal attacks on reproductive health care.”
