A new campaign ad from Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign features sexual abuse survivor Hadley Duvall, a Kentucky woman who was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant when she was 12 years old.
Duvall says in the 30-second spot, titled “Monster” that at the time she discovered she was pregnant, she “had options” that survivors of rape and incest no longer have after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Kentucky’s current abortion ban has no exceptions for rape or incest.
“I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all,” Duvall says in the ad. “Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest.”
Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe. He has boasted about the appointments, and said during a Sept. 10 debate with Harris that he would not sign a nationwide abortion bill into law, but did not answer whether he would veto such a ban.
“What I did is something, for 52 years, they have been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states, and through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that,” Trump said. He added that he “strongly” believes in exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
Harris said during the debate that she would “proudly” sign a bill into law that restored the federal right to an abortion.
Duvall first spoke publicly about her experience after Roe was overturned and Kentucky’s trigger law took effect. She appeared in a 2023 campaign ad for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, criticizing Beshear’s GOP opponent for his support of Kentucky’s abortion ban.
“To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable,” she said in the Beshear campaign ad.
Beshear won his bid for reelection.
Duvall also appeared at the Democratic National Convention last month with other women who had been affected by abortion bans in southern states, and joined Gov. Josh Shapiro in Philadelphia on Sunday to kick off the Harris campaign’s “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour. The tour stops in Harrisburg on Wednesday.
The soundtrack to the “Monster” ad is the song “When the Party’s Over” by Billie Eilish, who on Tuesday endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket “because they are fighting to protect our reproductive freedom.”
Harris was in Philadelphia on Tuesday for an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, where she reiterated her support for reinstating Roe and codifying its protections into law. Women, she said, should be able to decide what is best for them when it comes to their own bodies, “instead of having her government tell her what to do — especially a bunch of people in these state capitals who think they’re in a better position to tell her what to do than she is to know what’s in her best interest.”
“Monster” begins airing today on national TV and on broadcast and cable networks across battleground states, including Pennsylvania.
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Written by Kim Lyons. Cross-posted from the Kentucky Lantern.
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