WASHINGTON (AP) — A 22-year-old girl who turned an abortion rights advocate after she was raped by her stepfather as a toddler tells her story in a new campaign ad for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Hadley Duvall says in voiceover that she’s by no means slept a full evening in her life — her stepfather first began abusing her when she was 5 years previous, and impregnated her when she was 12. As she speaks, pictures of Duvall as a toddler flash on the display. The soundtrack of the advert is a music by Billie Eilish, who endorsed the vp on Tuesday.
“I just remember thinking I have to get out of my skin. I can’t be me right now. Like, this can’t be it,” Duvall says. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all. But I had options.”
The advert is a part of a continued push by the Harris marketing campaign to focus on the rising penalties of the autumn of Roe, together with that some states have abortion restrictions with no exceptions for rape or incest. Women in some states are struggling more and more perilous medical care and the primary reported occasion of a lady dying from delayed reproductive care surfaced this week. Harris lays the blame squarely on Republican nominee Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the constitutional proper to abortion.
Duvall blames Trump, too.
“Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest,” she says in the advert. “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”
During the presidential debate on Sept. 10, Trump repeatedly took credit score for appointing the three Supreme Court justices and leaned closely on his catchall response to questions on abortion rights, saying the difficulty must be left as much as the states. He mentioned he wouldn't signal a nationwide abortion ban.
“I’m not signing a ban,” he mentioned, including that “there is no reason to sign the ban.”
But he additionally repeatedly declined to say whether or not he would veto such a ban if he have been elected once more — a query that has lingered because the Republican nominee has shifted his stances on the essential election problem.
Duvall of Owensboro, Kentucky, first informed her story publicly final fall in a marketing campaign advert for the governor’s race in her residence state supporting Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. Duvall’s stepfather was convicted of rape and is in jail; she miscarried.
Beshear received reelection, and Democrats have mentioned Duvall’s advert was a robust motivator, significantly for rural, male voters who had beforehand voted for Trump.
Duvall can be touring the nation to marketing campaign for Harris together with different girls who've been telling their private tales because the fall of Roe, becoming a member of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro final week.
