Just a day after endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris on National Voter Registration Day, Billie Eilish has lent her vocals to back a haunting new ad from the Harris-Walz campaign featuring reproductive rights activist Hadley Duvall, who recounts her chilling history of sexual abuse by her stepfather, and the moment she found out she was pregnant with his child at age 12. Betches News has been granted an exclusive first look at the new 60-second spot.
In the new spot, Duvall says “I have never slept a full night in my entire life” and shares her gratitude for the options she had when she was 12. Choices that women no longer have, thanks to Donald Trump’s and the republicans’ efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I spoke with Duvall via phone from Harrisburg, PA as part of the campaign’s Reproductive Freedom National Bus Tour. Of her experience meeting with voters on the campaign trial, she said it’s been “eye-opening to be able to talk to individuals no matter what party they’re registered with and know that we can find common ground that women and girls deserve the right to health care and everybody can mind their own business…Politics has always been portrayed negatively to me personally as a Gen Z, and I’ve just never felt like I was educated enough or taken seriously enough. So I always steered away until I had a story that could humanize the situation that a lot of people celebrated. It’s just been really amazing to see so many people bring their stories together and be able to unite with each other.”
This ad drops just after ProPublica reported on Monday that at least two women in Georgia have died as a direct result of not receiving abortion care thanks to Georgia’s abortion ban, which puts doctors at risk of prosecution for providing the procedure. Then yesterday, Senate republicans blocked legislation that would protect access to IVF at the federal level.
When I asked her about the duality of those events, she said they show us that “Donald Trump is a liar. We cannot trust what he says because he doesn’t know from day to day. And we know that Kamala Harris has always said, she will not allow a national abortion ban if she’s the one in office. And if we can flip some Congress seats, then we will be able to restore our right to an abortion and all reproductive health care.”
Notably, Donald Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance, who seems relatively obsessed with women’s reproductive activity, didn’t even bother to show up to vote against protecting IVF access. So there will be no federal protections for IVF either.
Duvall wants to make sure voters know that Vance skipped the vote. “Getting out there and showing people who aren’t politically involved, or who are maybe undecided, why does he have the choice to skip and not make his stance known? They deserve to know where he stands.”
The death of Amber Nicole Thurman, which was officially deemed preventable by an oversight committee in Georgia, is a clear demonstration of how abortion bans can be fatally dangerous, as they outright prohibit a medically necessary procedure, regardless of a patient’s reason for seeking one. In Thurman’s case, she needed a D&C procedure to remove fetal tissue from her uterus after she developed sepsis. When she went to a suburban Atlanta hospital with symptoms, she was forced to wait 20 hours while her organs failed before doctors determined her status dire enough to operate. She died on the operating table.
Duvall said, “It’s so devastating that they have to not only put women in the situation, but doctors are in the situation too. This is unfair to doctors who have wonder, ‘am I sending my patient out to their car to die, or am I going to be able to save them when it’s time for them to come back inside?’ And now there’s a child who has to live without his mother and that is heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. That’s what those Donald Trump’s abortion bans do to people. This is not a black and white situation and if it’s too complicated for politicians because they didn’t go to medical school, then they should just give it back to the medical professionals.”
The better news? The opportunity to amend the constitutions of 10 states to add abortion protections will be on the ballot in this November (though early voting starts much sooner — as soon as next week in some states!).
Register to vote, or check to make sure your voter registration is up to date at iwillvote.com.
