Biden campaign taps Kentucky abortion rights advocate for national appearances

As the presidential election heats up, Democratic President Joe Biden’s campaign has called upon a Kentuckian to help its messaging on abortion rights in America.

Hadley Duvall, an abortion rights advocate, just appeared alongside Vice President Kamala Harris on a popular MSNBC program and next to First Lady Jill Biden in the key swing state of Pennsylvania this weekend.

Duvall is no stranger to high-profile campaigns.

The 22-year-old Owensboro native filmed the most memorable television ad of the 2023 Kentucky governor’s race in support of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection effort.

That ad, an emotional rejoinder against the state’s Republican-backed ban on abortion where she recounted her stepfather raping and impregnating her at the age of 12, is considered by some politicos to be the “knock out punch” in Beshear’s five point win over GOP candidate and former attorney general Daniel Cameron.

National Democrats took notice.

In 2023, it was Cameron she called out by name. This year, it’s former president and presumed GOP nominee Donald Trump.

At a campaign rally in Southeast Pennsylvania, Duvall skewered Trump’s comment earlier this month that it was “a beautiful thing to watch” each state’s abortion laws take effect.

“What is so beautiful about telling a 12-year-old girl that she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her?” Duvall said, according to he Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

“To tell a girl who has already been robbed of her childhood that she will be robbed of her future as well is unthinkable, yet, because of Donald Trump, this is happening in states across the country, and if you think that they will stop there, you clearly have not been paying attention.”

The three justices appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States during Trump’s term in office all voted to overrule Roe v. Wade in 2022, which allowed strict abortion bans in conservative states like Kentucky to take effect.

During an appearance with Harris on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Duvall said that women’s lives are at stake in the presidential election.

“It does not matter if she is 12, 9, 34 – if there is a woman who is in that reproductive age, then her life is at stake during this election,” she said. “It does not matter if you have never voted Democrat in your life, it’s [time to] get off your high horse.”

Harris sat next to Duvall during the interview on MSNBC.

“After the Dobbs decision came down, laws have been proposed and passed that, as Hadley has said, make no exceptions even for rape or incest,” Harris said. “Think about what these extremists are saying to a survivor of a crime of violence to their body, a survivor of a crime that is a violation of their body. To say to that survivor ‘you have no right or authority to make a decision about what happens to your body next.’

“That’s immoral.”

With the election less than five months away, the first debate between Biden and Trump will take place on CNN this Thursday.

Democrats in Kentucky think Duvall will prove a valuable voice for the Biden campaign.

Beth Thorpe, a strategist in Louisville, said that her story changed the minds of many Kentuckians, even ones that some might assume were already made up.

“I don’t think people spell this out very often, but in a lot of places there’s a lot of sexual abuse and a lot of people don’t talk about it,” Thorpe said. “I think there were a lot of really conservative people that were just like ‘this is not OK,’ when they saw that commercial.”

Beshear is still appearing alongside Duvall. The two spoke at an abortion rights event in Tennessee Friday night.

In 2022, the Democrats nationally fared well relative to expectations, as midterm elections can often prove a rocky road for the incumbent president’s party. Messaging against the court’s overruling of Roe was a key plank on many a candidate’s platform, and the Biden campaign this year is no exception.

Sen. David Yates, D-Louisville, sponsored “Hadley’s Law,” an effort to instate exceptions for incest and rape to the state’s trigger ban this year — a move seen largely as a small, moderate capitulation on the ban — but it got nowhere.

He said that Duvall could work as an effective messenger in that she can personalize an issue that, for some, is abstract.

“It’s easy to talk in generalities, but when you actually put faces and names with some of the victims, it helps people understand that this isn’t just a policy position,” Yates said. “It’s about individuals and protecting their rights.”

He said it also presses this question to individual voters: do you think something should change in states with near-complete bans on abortion?

“Hadley reminds us that it’s not necessarily about how you feel personally about abortion, but more about whether or not you think that individual should have a choice in this particular instance,” Yates said.

Many young Americans seek to carve out careers in politics, either starting at the bottom of the totem pole in Washington or working their way up the ranks at their state capitol or city hall.

But not every 22-year-old gets to say they appeared on television and at a campaign rally with the vice president and first lady.

Might Duvall, fresh off graduating from Midway University, have a future in politics?

“I think that’s totally up to her,” Thorpe said. “If she does, she’s got a good start.”