‘There is no ban’: Republicans test-drive new abortion messaging

Ad released in Virginia part of well-funded effort to portray Democrats as abortion extremists and Republicans as reasonable compromisers

The ad opens with the sound of a fetal heartbeat.

“Most people believe that abortion at the moment of birth is wrong, far beyond any reasonable limit. Not Virginia Democrats,” a female narrator says, just before the sound of a baby cooing and crying. “They fought to make late-term abortions the rule, not the exception.”

At the end of the ad, the heartbeat flatlines.

The digital ad, released in the last few weeks by the Virginia Republican party, is part of a six-figure effort to win over voters ahead of Virginia’s state legislative elections on 7 November. It aims to portray Democrats as abortion extremists and Republicans as champions of a reasonable compromise on a notoriously controversial issue. And it’s a new, risky Republican strategy – led by Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin – to recast abortion as a winning issue, after the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade last year led the GOP to underperform in the 2022 midterms.