Ky. abortion rights advocate says ‘Trump & Vance don’t care about women’ in new Biden ad
Hadley Duvall’s abortion rights message has gone national.
A survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, the Owensboro native is featured in a new ad from the reelection campaign of Democratic President Joe Biden. In it, Duvall directly calls out former President Donald Trump and his newly announced vice presidential running mate, JD Vance.
In a one-minute spot released Wednesday, Duvall recounts her story while she applies makeup in a mirror. She was raped and impregnated when she was 12 by her stepfather, who is now in prison for related charges.
“Honestly, I didn’t even know what was possible for my future when I was a kid,” Duvall said. “I had always wondered, like, sitting in class, do these people go home, and are they afraid of their dad, too?”
Duvall miscarried, but she said in the ad — and has said many times publicly — that had she not, she would’ve gotten an abortion.
Duvall’s story played a central role Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection messaging on abortion in Kentucky last year, where a majority-Republican legislature passed a near-total ban on abortion in the state that took effect in 2022 with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Like some other conservative states, Kentucky’s current law does not include exceptions for people who are impregnated through rape or incest, or those who have nonviable pregnancies.
In the Beshear campaign ad, Hadley made an emotional rejoinder against the state’s Republican-backed ban on abortion where she recounted the pain caused by her stepfather. It ran on television for weeks, and is considered by some to be the “knock out punch” in Beshear’s five-point win over GOP candidate and former attorney general Daniel Cameron.
A bill dubbed “Hadley’s Law” to create exceptions for rape and nonviable pregnancies was filed by a Democrat during the 2024 General Assembly. It went nowhere, despite a late push for its passage.
Duvall and Beshear have since publicly appeared together to advocate for the restoration of abortion rights, not just in Kentucky, but nationwide.
The pair headlined an event last month in Nashville hosted by a Tennessee reproductive rights advocacy group. That week, Duvall also appeared alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in an interview on MSNBC, and accompanied First Lady Jill Biden at a campaign stop for her husband in Pennsylvania.
Earlier on Wednesday, the First Lady tweeted a video of Hadley, saying, “Her name is Hadley Duvall, and you need to hear her story.”
“President Trump brags about overturning Roe v. Wade,” Duvall says. “He is proudly responsible for each and every abortion ban across the country, and he calls them a beautiful thing to watch. What is so beautiful about telling a 12-year-old girl that she must have the baby of her stepfather, who raped her?
“The stakes of this election could not be higher for our choices.”
President Biden’s ad, too, ended with Duvall rebuking former Trump and Vance, an Ohio Senator.
Both have voiced support for overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Girls like me are suffering,” Duvall said. “Their futures are being ripped away. Trump and JD Vance don’t care about women.
“When Roe v. Wade was overturned, immediately I just thought about being 12,” she said. “The first thing that was told to me when I saw that positive pregnancy test was, ‘you have options.’
“If Roe v. Wade would’ve been overturned sooner, I wouldn’t have heard that. And then it had me thinking that there’s someone that doesn’t get to hear that now.”
Trump and Vance “don’t care about girls in this situation,” Duvall said. “They will continue to take our rights away. In this election, we have a choice.”
This is a developing story that may be updated.
