President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign on Friday launched a new ad focused on how state bans on abortion are affecting Black maternal health.
Titled “Access,” the spot airing in the Atlanta, Raleigh, Charlotte, Philly, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Milwaukee media markets highlights Shawana Moore, a women’s health nurse practitioner from Atlanta, who speaks about the “fear and uncertainty” among patients and health care providers in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
The ad is timed near the two-year anniversary of an abortion ban in Georgia. It’s part of the Biden campaign’s $50 million paid media program for July.
“I think there’s fear and uncertainty,” Moore says in the ad. “Within the United States, there’s a maternal health crisis that disproportionately impacts women of color.”
Black maternal mortality rates have become a focus of the Pennsylvania Legislature and Gov. Josh Shapiro in the past several years. In October, State Reps. La’Tasha D. Mayes (D-Allegheny), Gina Curry (D-Delaware), and Morgan Cephas (D-Philadelphia) announced the creation of the Black Maternal Health Caucus in an effort to find legislative solutions to Pennsylvania’s high rates of Black maternal mortality and morbidity.
A 2022 report from the Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which reviews all maternal deaths in the commonwealth, found that Pennsylvania had an overall pregnancy-associated mortality ratio of 82 deaths per 100,000 live births.
In March 2023, Gov. Josh Shapiro said that for the first time, Pennsylvania would invest in combating the maternal mortality crisis with state funding to conduct a study on maternal mortality prevention strategies.
In March of this year, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced $1.7 million in grant funding to address the issue. That’s in addition to the $2.6 million increase for maternal mortality prevention in the 2024-25 budget.
Abortion remains legal in Pennsylvania up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
The Biden campaign has tried to demonstrate the consequences of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision for women who have had to navigate the new patchwork of state abortion laws to receive care.
While he has boasted about appointing the three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, Trump said during the presidential debate in June that he believes in abortion ban exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. But in February he reportedly expressed support for a nationwide abortion ban, and during an interview with a Pittsburgh TV news station in May, Trump hinted that he might be open to states limiting or banning access to contraception, though he walked back his remarks the same day in a social media post.