Blaming former President Donald Trump for changes to the abortion landscape is a major strategy of the radically pro-abortion Harris-Walz campaign. A new ad by the campaign specifically faults Trump for every reproduction-related tragedy.
The 60-second ad features a young woman named Hadley Duvall. She explains that she was sexually abused by her stepfather starting at age 5. Then, at 12, she became pregnant. She tells the camera, “I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant at all. But I had options.”
Duvall never had an abortion, which the ad fails to mention. She miscarried.
The ad closes with Hadley saying, “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. Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”
The ad is sympathetic. It is also filled with falsehoods.
It is true the Supreme Court overturned Roe and that Trump greatly contributed to that with his nominations. The court righted a legal and moral wrong that had been on the books for almost half a century. With the decision, the abortion issue returned to the states. This is federalism, and it remains a good thing despite anger from both sides of the abortion debate.
The problem with the ad is that it strongly suggests there are no abortion exceptions for rape or incest anywhere in the country. This is easily disproved. A total of nine states with abortion bans do not allow for any rape or incest exceptions, according to KFF. Arizona does not have a rape or incest exception but does allow abortion up to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Of the other states with bans of some kind in place, the rape and incest exceptions vary. For example, Idaho has a near-total ban on abortion but allows for rape and incest exceptions through the first trimester. Mississippi, one of the most conservative states in the nation, has a ban with exceptions for the life of the mother and rape or incest, as long as law enforcement is informed of the sexual crime and the abortion occurs within the first six weeks of pregnancy.
Rape and incest aren’t the only exceptions. All 41 states that have any type of restriction — this includes places such as California or Illinois that only limit abortion starting at viability — include exceptions for “threat to the life of a pregnant person,” according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. A total of 23 states with any restrictions at all allow for abortion when a mother’s health is in danger. And 12 of these restrictive states allow for abortion in cases of “diagnosis of lethal fetal anomaly.”
It is important to note how often abortion in cases of rape or incest occurs. The pro-abortion Left would have you believe a huge number of women seek abortion for these reasons. That is not the case. A Guttmacher Institute study comparing the reasons for abortion is telling. Just 1% of those surveyed cited rape as a primary or contributing factor in seeking an abortion. Fewer than 0.5% of respondents cited incest as a factor. The reasons cited most often include seeking an abortion because it would interfere with life, education, job, or a relationship or would worsen financial hardship.
Abortion remains widely available. Women can travel to other states to obtain abortions. Even many states with restrictions allow for rape or incest exceptions. And the number of abortions actually went up 11% between 2020 and 2023. Trump himself is against a nationwide ban and personally supports exceptions, including those for rape or incest.
The abortion landscape in America isn’t what the pro-choice crowd would like you to think. If anything, the work to create a life-affirming culture is facing an uphill climb. Both the political pressure and societal narrative work against this goal.
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Rape and incest are sexual crimes that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. That is the truth. What’s not true is that because of Trump, women have lost their freedoms. Federalism allows individual states to have their own abortion laws. Pro-life Americans such as myself may disagree with abortion as a solution to rape or incest, but the current post-Dobbs reality allows for it.
Regardless, Vice President Kamala Harris makes Trump the bad guy in all of this. She and her campaign have no interest in telling the truth.
Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a contributing freelance columnist at the Freemen News-Letter.