2024 has seen a flurry of abortion-themed campaign ads, from January’s ad featuring Dr. Austin Dennard, the OB-GYN in Texas denied an abortion for her dangerous pregnancy, to July’s featuring testimony from Hadley Duvall, the Kentucky woman raped and impregnated by her stepfather as a child.
Now, in the wake of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller’s 2022 deaths—officially deemed “preventable” by a Georgia maternal health board last month—the latest ad from All* Above All and Project 68 hones in on the families left behind when abortion bans kill women by keeping them from life-saving care.
The ad “Something’s Missing” highlights the husbands and children of women whom abortion bans have killed, in an effort to bring more men and families into the conversation about the fatal consequences of denying women reproductive care. The 30-second ad shows a father and son looking at a family photo and sitting at a dinner table with an extra chair for the mother and wife who died, now empty forever.
Since Roe v. Wade’s fall, this same scene has played out at dinner tables across the U.S., especially since states with restrictive abortion laws are seeing a mass exodus of OB-GYNS afraid to practice under the new bans.
Thurman and Miller both left children and families behind. Thurman, who died at 28 years old, left behind a 6-year-old boy. Her last words were to her mother, asking her to take care of her son. Miller, 44, had a husband and three children, from a teenage son to a 3-year-old daughter.
Two weeks after the world learned about Thurman and Miller’s deaths, news broke of another mother whose death could have been prevented. Taysha Wilkinson-Sobieski, a 26-year-old Indiana woman with a husband and 1-year-old, died when she could not access timely healthcare for an ectopic pregnancy, despite living five minutes from a hospital.
The majority of women getting abortions in America are already mothers, a point the ad makes clear with the family photo and the little boy asking, “Daddy, when is Mommy coming home?”
During testing, viewers who saw a partisan pro-Harris-Walz version of the ad were pushed toward supporting the Democratic ticket, especially among 18- to 34-year-olds, AAPI and Latino voters and people who did not vote in 2020.
Since Roe v. Wade, sharing the stories of individual women hurt by abortion bans has proven to be an effective strategy in campaign ads urging voters to side with candidates who support abortion access. Before Duvall’s ad for the then-Biden campaign earlier this year, her 2023 ad in support of Kentucky Gov. Andrew Beshear’s campaign went viral, and Beshear went on to win reelection.
There’s also been a rise in candidates themselves using personal stories to stress the need for women’s reproductive freedom. Earlier this year in Alabama, Democrat Marilyn Lands flipped a House seat with an ad telling her own story about getting an abortion, comparing her experience decades ago to the many more hurdles women face now in 2024. Right now, Sen. Tammy Duckworth is championing the Right to IVF Act in the Senate with her own personal experience of becoming a mother through IVF after combat injuries complicated her ability to conceive.
In Tuesday’s debate, personal stories were a central feature of Tim Walz’s comments about reproductive rights, citing the example of Amber Nicole Thurman to point out the dangers of abortion bans and stating that he himself became a parent through fertility treatments.
About Hadley Duvall’s campaign ad, Jessica Valenti wrote, “I wish that young women didn’t have to lay bare their most painful and vulnerable moments just so the rest of us might be treated like full human beings. But I’m sure glad that they have the bravery to speak up.”
The ad “Something’s Missing” shows that abortion bans are not just a women’s issue but change whole families forever when they cause women’s deaths.
Editor’s note: The Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade represented the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. A series from Ms., Our Abortion Stories chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.
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