Woman raped by stepfather as a child tells her story in Kamala Harris campaign ad
CTV
A 22-year-old woman who became an abortion rights advocate after she was raped by her stepfather as a child tells her story in a new campaign ad for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Warning: Disturbing content
WASHINGTON -- A 22-year-old woman who became an abortion rights advocate after she was raped by her stepfather as a child tells her story in a new campaign ad for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Hadley Duvall says in voiceover that she's never slept a full night in her life — her stepfather first started abusing her when she was five years old, and impregnated her when she was 12. As she speaks, images of Duvall as a child flash on the screen. The soundtrack of the ad is a song by Billie Eilish, who endorsed the vice president on Tuesday.
“I just remember thinking I have to get out of my skin. I can’t be me right now. Like, this can’t be it,” Duvall says. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all. But I had options.”
The ad is part of a continued push by the Harris campaign to highlight the growing consequences of the fall of Roe, including that some states have abortion restrictions with no exceptions for rape or incest. Women in some states are suffering increasingly perilous medical care and the first reported instance of a woman dying from delayed reproductive care surfaced this week. Harris lays the blame squarely on Republican nominee Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
Duvall blames Trump, too.
“Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest,” she says in the ad. “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”
