Louisiana congressional candidate Katie Darling (D) used a video of her own son’s birth in a campaign ad promoting access to abortion.
Darling’s campaign released the ad on Monday — a 75-second video that showed a very pregnant Darling talking about life on her family’s farm, where they grew their own food and raised chickens, among other things. The scene quickly changed to a hospital setting, and while the video showed Darling in labor with her son, the voice narrating was hers — touting the importance of access to abortion.
“Louisiana ranks 50th in crime, 48th in education, and 46th in health care,” she captioned the ad on Twitter. “I’m running for Congress to stop this race to the bottom because our children deserve better.”
WATCH:
Louisiana ranks 50th in crime, 48th in education, and 46th in health care. I’m running for Congress to stop this race to the bottom because our children deserve better. pic.twitter.com/OfFQHuPTzU
— Katie Darling for Louisiana (@katie4louisiana) October 3, 2022
“I’m Katie Darling, and I live on a farm in St. Tammany Parish,” Darling said as the ad began, showing her walking around the family farm with her husband and daughter. In the ad’s voiceover, she talked about growing her own food, composting, and teaching her daughter to help feed the chickens.
She then pivoted to the hospital setting, lamenting Louisiana’s strict abortion ban — which only makes exceptions for cases where the fetus would not survive birth or the mother’s life is at risk — even as the video showed her in active labor, delivering her son. “We should be putting pregnant women at ease. Not putting their lives at risk,” she asserted.
The ad concluded with a shot of Darling, appearing to nurse her newborn, as she argued that fewer restrictions on abortion would make the world a better place for him.
A Washington Post profile of Darling and her new ad explained that she had been seven months pregnant in June when the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization prompted the overturning of two landmark abortion cases — Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — and that had caused her to panic.
Because she was considered high risk, Darling told the Post that her initial response was to inform her husband that they had to move out of Louisiana. “My doctors wouldn’t know what kind of care they were allowed to provide me,” she worried.
Instead, she chose to stay and run for Congress — challenging House Minority Whip Steve Scalise — explaining, “If we don’t codify Roe, there won’t be anywhere in the country we could go that’s safe.”