DNC launches billboards in North Carolina targeting Trump over abortion

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) launched billboards in North Carolina on Saturday targeting former President Trump over his stance on abortion, ahead of Trump’s rally in Wilmington.

Sixteen billboards will be displayed in Charlotte and Wilmington, in English and Spanish, targeting Trump for his apparent support of the Tar Heel State’s 12-week abortion ban, signed into law by Governor Roy Cooper (R). This is the largest number of billboards the DNC has launched in response to Trump’s influence in states this election cycle, the committee said.

“Donald Trump is responsible for the attacks on reproductive rights we are seeing in North Carolina and across the country,” DNC spokesperson Jackie Bush said in a statement, shared with The Hill. “His anti-freedom agenda is already endangering the lives of women in North Carolina, but Trump and his cronies will not stop until all women across the country live under an extreme national abortion ban.

“That’s why women in North Carolina and across the country will reject Trump’s extreme bans at the polls this November and send President Joe Biden back to the White House,” Bush wrote.

The ad campaign comes just weeks after Trump refused to take a position on a potential federal ban on abortion, saying the fate of the procedure should be left up to each state. In about four minutes video posted on Truth Social, he said he was proud to have ended Roe v. Wade. Wade, but has not endorsed any type of federal abortion legislation, which some conservative groups have pressured him to do.

He later argued that a national ban was “unnecessary” because the Supreme Court had ended the federal right to access abortion.

“We don’t need this anymore. Why We Broke Roe v. Wade Wade and we did something no one thought possible,” Trump said. “We give it back to the states. And the states are working brilliantly, in some cases conservative, in some cases non-conservative. But they are working and it is working the way it should.”

The former president also said he would not sign a federal ban on the procedure if he were re-elected in November and if it was approved in Congress.

Abortion access is now a patchwork of state-by-state laws that is constantly changing as new restrictions come into effect. Many states have also pushed to put abortion on the ballot, spurring hope among Democrats that measures aimed at enshrining rights around abortion access could increase turnout and help their candidates in the most competitive races.