Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign released a TV advertisement on Saturday reminding voters that former President Donald J. Trump has taken credit for helping overturn Roe v. Wade, and targeting the growing share of voters who say that abortion is their top issue.
The new 30-second ad will appear on broadcast and cable networks in seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin — and in Nebraska’s competitive Second Congressional District, the campaign said. It is part of a broader $370 million advertising blitz by the Harris campaign, which said it had not determined how much it would spend to broadcast the abortion spot.
What the ad says
Over ominous music, the ad opens with a clip of Mr. Trump saying in 2016 that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who seek abortions. It then shows him saying this year that for “years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated and I did it, and I’m proud to have done it.”
The narrator then says that Mr. Trump “wants to go further, with plans to restrict birth control, ban abortion nationwide, even monitor women’s pregnancies.”
More context
Mr. Trump’s 2016 statement about “punishment,” made in a forum with Chris Matthews of MSNBC, was almost immediately seen as a gaffe from a candidate new to politics, and Mr. Trump reversed himself within hours.
But he has repeatedly expressed pride in appointing three Supreme Court justices who voted in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion and leading to bans or restrictions in 22 states.
Some of the claims about Mr. Trump’s future plans are drawn from Project 2025, a set of conservative policies drawn by up some of the former president’s allies; Mr. Trump has distanced himself from the blueprint. Mr. Trump has by turns said that he likes the idea of a 15-week federal ban and that he would not sign a national abortion ban. He has also said that he does not support restricting birth control, but has suggested that he might support allowing states to do so.
A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement that the vice president was “lying about President Trump’s position on abortion,” adding, “President Trump has been unequivocally clear: He does not support a federal ban on abortion.”
What the ad is trying to do
The ad is aimed at exploiting voters’ unease with the Republican Party’s position on abortion, centering the issue as polling shows that voters in swing states increasingly say abortion is key to their choice in the fall.
For women younger than 45, abortion has eclipsed the economy as the top issue, according to New York Times/Siena College polling. In an August survey of voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, significantly more voters said they trusted Ms. Harris on abortion: She led Mr. Trump on that issue by 24 percentage points in those states.
The former president is said to have privately told his advisers that abortion could sink his party in the election.
Mr. Trump has sent mixed signals about abortion this year. He seemed to suggest last week that he might support a Florida ballot measure to expand abortion rights, only to say one day later that he would vote against it.
The abortion ad arrived four days before the debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump on ABC News on Tuesday, where the topic is likely to come up.
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