A new series of ads from Vice President Harris’s campaign hit at former President Trump for his recent claim that he will be a “protector” of women by highlighting the dangerous medical situations women face in states with abortion bans.
The ads, called “You Will Be Protected,” tie Trump to the story of a Texas woman who developed a life-threatening infection after being denied an emergency abortion after a miscarriage.
The ad features Ondrea and Ceasar, a Texas couple who shared their story publicly for the first time. Ondrea became pregnant in 2022, a few months after the state’s near-total abortion ban took effect.
But Ondrea’s water broke when she was 16 weeks pregnant, and doctors told her that her daughter would not survive. She eventually went into labor and suffered a miscarriage. The ad claims Ondrea was not offered an emergency abortion because of Texas law, which bans almost all abortions with some extremely narrow medical exceptions.
Ondrea developed a major sepsis infection, and doctors needed to perform a six-hour emergency surgery where they cut open almost her entire torso in order to save her life.
The ad features graphic photos of Ondrea in a hospital bed with a massive surgical incision across her body. Captions tell viewers her story, and audio of Trump talking about abortion is spliced into the scene.
In a longer version released exclusively online, Ondrea explicitly blames Trump.
“He did this to me. It almost cost me my life, and it will affect me for the rest of my life. Even though my wound is physically closed, there is still a part of me that still feels open,” Ondrea says.
The television ad, which will first run ahead of Harris’s CNN town hall Wednesday, is part of a last-minute effort by the Harris campaign to attack Trump for the current state of medical care for women across the country.
It also comes ahead of a Harris rally on Friday in Houston, where she will focus on reproductive rights. The campaign said Texas is “ground zero of the nation’s extreme abortion bans.”
Trump has repeatedly bragged about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right to an abortion. The Harris campaign wants to tie the consequences of state abortion bans directly back to Trump. More than 1 in 3 women live in a state that bans abortion.
Stories about women being denied emergency care until their condition becomes life-threatening have become increasingly common in the 14 states with strict abortion bans. In some states, doctors can face criminal charges if they provide medical care.
Republicans and anti-abortion advocates deny that women are at risk, because most states have medical exceptions. They argue doctors are only afraid of providing care because of “misinformation” from Democrats and abortion rights groups.
But doctors in states with abortion bans across the country have said the exceptions to such bans are often unclear and contradictory.