For Immediate Release: Monday, November 4, 2019
Contact: [email protected]
NARAL Pro-Choice America has launched an ad buy in Virginia, responding to an eleventh hour surge of disinformation around abortion later in pregnancy just days before all 140 General Assembly seats are up for election.
NARAL’s ads are running in three key districts, SD-12, SD-7, and HD-31, where pro-choice Democratic women (Debra Rodman, Delegate Cheryl Turpin, and Delegate Elizabeth Guzman) are facing off against anti-choice opponents and confronting false and misleading attack ads and mailers around abortion later in pregnancy. View the ads here, here, and here.
“Anti-choice extremists know that their goal of banning abortion and punishing women is highly unpopular and out of touch so they’re predictably resorting to complete fabrications and inflammatory accusations,” said Adrienne Kimmell, Chief Research and Communications Officer of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “We are hard at work in Virginia making sure voters aren’t duped by false attacks and have the facts about abortion and reproductive freedom when they go to cast their ballots on Tuesday. There’s a lot at stake for Virginia’s ability to make their own decisions about if, when, and how to raise a family. We’re making sure Virginians can make these decisions with the people they love and trust, not politicians.”
In addition to the ads, NARAL Pro-Choice America and NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia have engaged tens of thousands of voters, including knocking on 30,000 doors, especially in key districts in northern Virginia, Virginia Beach and the Richmond suburbs and 7,000 phone calls. NARAL Virginia also endorsed in 56 state legislative races, including the three districts where this latest NARAL ad campaign is focused, and NARAL Virginia is running a digital ad buy defending reproductive freedom champions and working to unseat anti-choice incumbents.
“Here in Virginia, polling shows that 72% of voters trust a woman to make her own reproductive healthcare decisions, and expect their legislators to secure a future that safeguards access to abortion care and upholds basic rights and justice,” stated Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia. “With Roe v. Wade hanging by a thread at the Supreme Court and access to safe, legal abortion under attack by anti-abortion Republican-controlled state legislatures across this country, the stakes could not be higher, as this election outcome will determine the fate of reproductive freedom in Virginia for years to come.”
Despite vitriolic campaigns to confuse and mislead voters, a February 2019 PPP poll found that 72% of Virginians support safe and legal abortion rights and believe a woman should be able to make her own decisions about pregnancy, along with those they love and trust, especially in the deeply personal and complex situations where something has gone wrong with a pregnancy.
The same PPP poll found that a strong majority (68%) of Virginians say terminating a pregnancy in the third trimester should be legal if the woman’s health is at risk and only 20% of voters oppose this.
In addition, a national survey conducted in April 2019 by Lake Research Partners and Hart Research Associates found that 68 percent to 24 percent voters say they favor allowing abortion later in pregnancy when something in a pregnancy has gone wrong such as a fetus that can’t survive, danger to a woman’s life or health, or other serious circumstances.
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NARAL Pro-Choice America and its network of state affiliates and chapters are dedicated to protecting and expanding reproductive freedom for all. For more than 50 years, NARAL has worked to guarantee that every woman has the right to make personal decisions regarding the full range of reproductive choices, including preventing unintended pregnancy, bearing healthy children, and choosing legal abortion. Since 1969, NARAL has made history, grown to over 2 million members, and met the moments that have defined this fight with action, power and freedom. In recognition of its work defending our constitutional right to choose, Fortune Magazine described NARAL as “one of the top 10 advocacy groups in America.”