President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign launched a paid media blitz about reproductive rights in Arizona on Thursday, two days after the state’s Supreme Court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.
The seven-figure ad buy focuses on former President Donald Trump’s latest abortion stance, in which he again took credit for overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling because of the justices he appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court and said states should decide abortion policy.
The move is part of a larger, more aggressive strategy to seize on Trump's record on abortion, with the Biden team quickly mobilizing to respond on an issue it sees as the most motivating one for voters in November.
“Because of Donald Trump, millions of women lost the fundamental freedom to control their own bodies,” the ad opens, with Biden narrating and then saying: “Women’s lives are in danger because of that.”
The 30-second spot, which first aired Thursday on MSNBC, will target key young, female and Latino voters both on television and online, according to the campaign.
“Your body and your decisions belong to you, not the government, not Donald Trump,” Biden says directly to the camera before he vows: “I will fight like hell to get your freedom back.”
The campaign said it hopes to reach voters in the battleground state this month with ad placements on shows like "Abbott Elementary," "Survivor," "Grey’s Anatomy," "American Idol," "The Voice" and "Saturday Night Live," as well as sports events and entertainment programming on TNT, TLC, ESPN, FX and Bravo.
“This week, women across the state of Arizona are watching in horror as an abortion ban from 1864 with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of a woman will soon become the law of the land for Arizonans,” campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement Thursday. “This nightmare is only possible because of Donald Trump.”
A 60-second spot released Monday features a testimonial from a Texas woman who says she nearly died twice from a miscarriage because she was denied care.
At the end of that video, the ad text says: “Donald Trump did this.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to travel to Tucson, Arizona, on Friday to hold a political event focused on reproductive freedom, where she plans to put Trump front and center on abortion, a Biden campaign official said.
When Biden was asked Wednesday for his message to Arizonans about the state Supreme Court's Civil War-era ruling, he told NBC News, “Elect me,” adding that he was from the “21st century, not back then. They weren’t even a state.”
