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Donald Trump has come to a straightforward conclusion about the 2024 election cycle: The greater the focus on abortion rights, the more likely it becomes that he and his fellow Republicans will lose. The former president’s assumption is well grounded and bolstered by overwhelming evidence.
With this in mind, Trump’s newest position on abortion — the latest in an evolving series — was unveiled this week, not just to alert voters as to his plans, but also in the hopes that it would take the issue off the table. The presumptive GOP nominee said as much last fall on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” telling Kristen Welker, “[F]or the first time in 52 years, you’ll have an issue that we can put behind us.”
What the Republican has long failed to appreciate is the fact that it’s not entirely up to him what is and is not a campaign issue. There’s a whole other party — and an incumbent president — which has some say in the matter, too.
It’s against this backdrop that NBC News reported yesterday on a new campaign ad from President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
The 60-second ad, which first aired Monday on MSNBC, focuses on Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who sued the state after, she said, she almost died from a miscarriage. In the video, Zurawski and her husband, Josh, discuss how they had started buying things for the baby while Amanda was pregnant, including a baby book.
“At 18 weeks, Amanda’s water broke,” the ad’s on-screen text reads. “She had a miscarriage.”
As the couple shares their story, the text adds, “Because Donald Trump killed Roe v. Wade, Amanda was denied standard medical care to prevent infection, an abortion.”
As Zurawski cries in the background, the ad concludes with a simple four-word message: “Donald Trump did this.”
If her name sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. It was about a year ago when Americans were introduced to a group of Texas women who were denied abortions — despite grave personal and medical risks — and who sued over the Republican-imposed ban. The New York Times noted at the time that their litigation marked “the first time that pregnant women themselves have taken legal action against the bans that have shut down access to abortion across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.”
As we discussed soon after, the women who filed the case actually wanted to be pregnant — until they learned about their tragic circumstances, including two fetuses that had no skulls.
Legal filings can sometimes be dry and technical, but this lawsuit was a qualitatively different kind of document. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, the filing detailed “the gruesome reality of life in a post-Roe America, specifically in Texas.” The Times’ report specifically highlighted Zurawski, who was told “she was not yet sick enough to receive an abortion, then twice became septic, and was left with so much scar tissue that one of her fallopian tubes is permanently closed.”
“You don’t think you’re somebody who’s going to need an abortion, let alone an abortion to save my life,” Zurawski explained. “If anybody reads my story, I don’t care where they are on the political spectrum, very few people would agree there is anything pro-life about this.”
A year later, she continues to tell her story — this time, in an ad from Biden’s campaign team.
The NBC News report added that the commercial is part of a $30 million ad campaign that will air in battleground states. The incumbent Democrat’s campaign also said the ad will air on a variety of popular prime-time programs.
“[F]or the first time in 52 years, you’ll have an issue that we can put behind us”? I don’t think so.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.