President Biden’s campaign will release a new advertisement on Monday taking direct aim at former President Donald J. Trump’s abortion policy, arguing that he is largely responsible for the end of Roe v. Wade, according to a campaign official.
The advertisement, to run on digital TV in battleground states, is part of the campaign’s $50 million July ad push.
In his 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump pledged that he would appoint multiple anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court, with a goal of overturning Roe. When the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022 ended the constitutional right to an abortion, Mr. Trump took credit.
The advertisement, titled “Her Own” and obtained by The New York Times, quotes Mr. Trump during the presidential debate last month with Mr. Biden, saying that “it’s been a great thing” that justices he appointed helped overturn Roe.
“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’s narrator says.
Social conservatives have long sought more rigid restrictions on abortion nationwide, but these measures have been a losing issue for Republicans in federal, state and local races since 2022. Mr. Trump has also tried to tread more lightly on abortion. He said at the debate that, rather than having a nationwide ban, he hoped individual states would decide on abortion rights.
The ad is aimed at addressing one of Mr. Biden’s weak spots in the debate, when he gave a muddled response on the issue, and since then he has used campaign speeches to redouble his promise to restore Roe v. Wade if he is re-elected, one of his campaign’s most enduring policy pledges.
Mr. Biden’s campaign, under intense scrutiny after his debate performance, has sought to keep the focus on Mr. Trump. It has been releasing social media posts, a website and ads about Mr. Trump and Project 2025, a Republican policy playbook assembled by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and like-minded groups. The playbook proposes a radical overhaul of federal government — including a rejection of the idea of abortion as health care.
The Biden camp’s push focuses on how a second Trump term would significantly curtail liberties. Project 2025 is not a part of Mr. Trump’s campaign platform, and he claimed no knowledge of the project last week. But the project was written or supported by a host of close Trump allies and former Trump administration officials, some of whom work for the former president.
“If Trump is re-elected, 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,” Lauren Hitt, a Biden campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement, adding that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were standing between women and “Trump’s cruel attacks on reproductive health care.”
Source Agencies
