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New Harris Campaign Ad Features Kentucky Rape Victim Who Became Pregnant at 12 • Pennsylvania Capital-Star
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New Harris Campaign Ad Features Kentucky Rape Victim Who Became Pregnant at 12 • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

A new campaign ad from Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign features sexual abuse survivor Hadley Duvall, a Kentucky woman who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather when she was 12 years old.

Duvall says in the 30-second spot, titled “Monster,” that when 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 does not include 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,” Duvall says in the ad. “Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women across the country lost the right to choose, even rape or incest.”

Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of the Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe. He has bragged about the appointments, saying during a Sept. 10 debate with Harris that he would not sign a nationwide abortion law, but did not answer a question about whether he would veto such a ban.

Harris lashes out at Trump over abortion rights, race in tense presidential debate

“What I did is something, for 52 years they’ve been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states, and through the genius and the heart and the strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do it,” Trump said, adding 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 that would restore federal abortion rights.

Duvall spoke publicly for the first time 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, in which she criticized Beshear’s GOP opponent for his support of Kentucky’s abortion ban.

“It is unthinkable to tell a 12-year-old girl to have the baby of her stepfather who raped her,” she said in Beshear’s campaign ad.

Beshear won re-election.

Duvall also appeared at the Democratic National Convention last month with other women affected by abortion bans in Southern states, and joined Gov. Josh Shapiro in Philadelphia on Sunday to kick off the Harris campaign bus tour, “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom.” 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 fight to protect our reproductive freedoms.”

Harris was in Philadelphia on Tuesday for an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, where she reiterated her support for restoring Roe and enshrining its protections in law. Women, she said, should be able to decide for themselves what’s best for them when it comes to their own bodies, “rather than having her government tell her what to do — particularly a bunch of people in these state capitals who think they’re better equipped to tell her what to do than she is to know what’s in her best interest.”

“Monster” airs today on national television and on broadcast and cable networks in the states it centers on, including Pennsylvania.