A day after the Florida Supreme Court cleared the way for the state ban on six-week abortions to take effect, President Biden’s re-election campaign launched an ad reminding voters of former President Donald Trump’s role in ending federal abortion rights.
“For 54 years they tried to get Roe v. Wade overturned and I did it and I’m proud to do it,” Trump says in a clip at the start of the ad. During his presidency, he nominated three justices to the US Supreme Court, creating a 6-3 conservative majority that struck down landmark legislation in 2022.
“In 2016, Donald Trump ran to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, in 2024, he’s running to push through a national ban on a woman’s right to vote,” Mr. Biden says in the ad.
But Trump said in February that he had not decided whether to support a national ban on 15-week abortions that some Republicans are pushing for, acknowledging that the issue could cost him politically.
“It probably hurt Republicans because a lot of Republicans didn’t know how to talk about it. But now it’s in the states,” Trump said during a televised interview with Sean Hannity in early March. “A lot of states vote their citizens and the votes come both ways, but pretty much they come in a certain number of weeks and the number 15 is mentioned. I haven’t settled on a number. I’m going to see.”
See the ad here:
Highlighting broad Democratic support for abortion access, he continued: “I’m running to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again so that women can once again have a federal guarantee of the right to choose. Donald Trump doesn’t trust women .. I do,” Mr Biden says.
The campaign says it had a “seven-figure buy” for that ad as part of a $30 million ad effort in the big battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada. He also believes the abortion rights issue gives them a chance to flip Florida, which Trump won in 2020, because women in the state have fewer alternatives. Neighboring Georgia also bans most abortions after about six weeks.
Campaign manager Julie Chavez-Rodriguez said: “This new, extreme abortion ban – the one that Donald Trump paved the way for – will now amount to a ban on the entire Southeast. Women in need of reproductive care across the region now face a choice between putting their lives at risk or traveling hundreds or thousands of kilometers to receive care.”
Since the nation’s highest court overturned Roe, Democrats have found abortion rights a winning issue — helping them limit their losses in the 2022 midterm elections, and when it appeared as a statewide ballot measure, abortion access it won every time, even in conservative states. Seven states, including those considered more conservative like Kansas and Ohiosince then they have started to defend abortion rights.
The Florida Supreme Court also ruled Monday that a ballot measure known as Amendment 4that would allow abortion until viability could be on the ballot in that state in November, but would require 60 percent support to pass.
Mr. Biden never says the word “abortion” in the new ad, referring instead to women’s “right to choose.” A staunch Catholic, the president personally opposes abortion, but believes women should have access to it. His willingness to use the issue for political advantage drew some criticism from the church over the weekend. In “Face the Nation,” Cardinal Wilton Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington called the president a “cafeteria Catholic,” suggesting he “picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to emphasize while ignoring or even contradicting other parts.”
However, the Most Reverend Marianne Edgar Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, defended Mr Biden on the matter, arguing: “It is also possible to be a practitioner of the faith as a public leader and not require everyone to lead in your country to be led by all the precepts of your faith.”
A CBS News poll conducted in March found that a majority of voters think that Roe’s ouster is bad for the country.
Shawna Mizelle contributed to this report.
