Democrats continue attacking Cameron’s abortion stances in new ad featuring rape survivor

A survivor of childhood sexual abuse has directly called out Attorney General Daniel Cameron for his historically staunch support of the state abortion ban’s lack of exceptions for rape and incest.

A new ad from the re-election campaign of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is the latest in a string of attacks on the GOP nominee for his stances on reproductive health care. The Wednesday ad comes on the heels of Cameron publicly softening his stance on exceptions, Planned Parenthood releasing ads against him and his position on birth control being nationally scrutinized.

“I was raped by my stepfather after years of sexual abuse,” Hadley, a young woman from Owensboro, said directly to the camera in the 30-second ad. “I was 12.”

“Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it’s like to stand in my shoes,” Hadley said in the new commercial. “This is to you, Daniel Cameron: to tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather, who raped her, is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”

Hadley has been a vocal critic of Kentucky’s abortion ban since the Dobbs decision last year and has previously spoken out about her abuse.

Her stepfather is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for multiple sexual offenses, according to the Kentucky Online Offender Lookup. He has two convictions from Henderson County for sodomy and rape, and four from Daviess County for sodomy, sexual abuse and two counts of rape. He is eligible for parole starting in 2032, and according to court records, must register as a sex offender upon release.

The ad is the second from Beshear hammering Cameron for his defense of Kentucky’s abortion bans and their lack of rape and incest exceptions, both in his capacity as the state’s highest law enforcement official and on the campaign trail.

Cameron publicly back-peddled on that position Monday. On a morning radio show, Cameron said, “there’s no question” that, if elected governor, he would sign a law adding rape and incest exceptions to the current law. His statement on the Tony & Dwight show on NewsRadio 840 WHAS is a veer from his past public position explicitly supporting the state’s ban as-is and his defense of the current exception — to save the life of a pregnant person — as being adequate.

Cameron, in responding to the ad, said Beshear is the “extremist” in this race.

“Andy Beshear is running the most despicable campaign in Kentucky history,” Cameron said in a video statement released Wednesday morning. “He lectures us on partisanship and unity, then runs disgusting, false attacks. I have said if the legislature were to bring me a bill with exceptions, I would sign it.”

Democrats, including the Beshear campaign, have descended on Cameron in the last two days to, as they characterize, call his bluff for flip-flopping.

The Kentucky Democratic Party posted footage from a primary candidate debate this spring hosted by Spectrum News. Anchor Mario Anderson asks Cameron whether he would “support any exceptions to Kentucky’s current abortion law, and if so, what are they?”

Cameron said, “Well, I support the current law, and of course, Mario, you know I’ve been defending the Human Life Protection Act, and I’m proud that, since August of last year, the abortion facilities have been closed in Kentucky.”

The Human Life Protection Act is Kentucky’s trigger law, which bans abortion except in circumstances where it’s needed to save the life of a pregnant person. The ban does not include exceptions for rape, incest, or fetal abnormalities that are incompatible with life.

On Tuesday, the KDP posted more footage of Cameron at a news conference hours after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 and Kentucky’s abortion bans became enforceable for the first time. “Abortion is, for all intents and purposes, over here in the commonwealth,” Cameron said. “There is no rape and incest exception.”

Another clip shows Cameron at a different primary candidate forum earlier this year being asked whether he supports those changes to the current law. Cameron said, “I’m not going to waver in my position on this, and we’re going to continue to defend the law as is.”

Cameron also confirmed his past position against rape and incest exceptions in a Kentucky Right to Life questionnaire. It prompts a “yes” or “no” answer to the following question: “Do you believe that a child conceived as a result of sexual assault should be protected by the same laws protecting the lives of children conceived naturally?”

Cameron scored 100%, earning him the group’s endorsement for being an “unwavering defender” of Kentucky’s abortion laws.

Tamarra Wieder, Kentucky state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, called Cameron a “liar” for flip-flopping.

“Either he lied about his position in order to secure a right-wing fringe group’s endorsement, or he’s lying to voters now,” Wieder said. “Kentucky’s abortion ban, which Cameron unapologetically defended in court, denies sexual assault survivors, like Hadley, the freedom to decide what is best for their bodies. And like Hadley, Kentuckians are fed up.”

In response to the Beshear campaign’s new ad Wednesday morning, former Democratic State Auditor Adam Edelen tweeted, “This will be remembered as the knock out punch. There’s always a reckoning for extremism.

‘Something that never happens’

Though Cameron has remained steady in his defense of the trigger law as-is, up until his course correction two days ago, he shot back at Beshear’s latest ad by calling the governor an “extremist” for vetoing a “born-alive bill.”

“He supports abortion through the ninth month,” Cameron said — a reiteration of a common conservative misnomer that Democrats support abortion “up to the moment of birth.” Even under Roe, elective abortion was never legal up to the moment of birth but viability. Late-term abortions, which are rare and typically take place in the third trimester, are provided largely in cases of severe medical emergencies. In 2020 in Kentucky, for example, only 1 abortion out of 4,104, total, was provided after 22 weeks gestation — well under the 40-week mark of a typical pregnancy.

Cameron buttressed his characterization of Beshear as an abortion extremist by citing his veto of Senate Bill 9 in 2020, referred to as the “born-alive bill.” It would’ve codified into law what is already the standard of care agreed on in the medical community: if an abortion doesn’t successfully terminate a pregnancy and a fetus is “born alive,” doctors must provide life-saving care. Supporters of the bill at the time said there were no documented cases of such an event happening in Kentucky.

What Cameron doesn’t clarify is that Republicans filed near-identical legislation the following year, also Senate Bill 9, and Beshear allowed it to pass into law without his signature.

The governor defended his decision not to sign the bill, implying it was a solution in search of a problem because, as he told WFPL at the time, it’s “something that never happens.”

An issue of ‘safety and health’

Cameron’s reversal on Monday is significant, not only because it contradicts what he has said on the campaign trail and in court when defending the constitutionality of Kentucky’s abortion ban. But it’s a split with the General Assembly, whose Republican supermajority has refused more than once to codify into law rape and incest exceptions, including in the year since abortion became illegal.

In 2022, Democrats filed two amendments to add rape and incest exceptions to House Bill 3, an omnibus bill that critics said effectively ended abortion access in Kentucky, though Roe hadn’t yet been overturned. Both failed.

Earlier this year, GOP Whip Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, filed a bill to add rape, incest and fetal abnormality exceptions to the trigger law, but it never received a committee hearing.

Soon after abortion was criminalized in Kentucky, the state’s two remaining outpatient abortion clinics sued the state. They argued the trigger law and six-week ban outlawing abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected were unconstitutional and caused irreparable harm to women forced to remain pregnant against their will. In Kentucky’s case, that included survivors of rape and incest.

Cameron pushed back on that assertion in court filings, arguing that neither clinic proved pregnant patients would suffer irreparable harm for being forced to remain pregnant.

“Plaintiffs have simply not shown that any irreparable harm will befall them without temporary injunctive relief,” Cameron said in a June 2022 filing. Rather, irreparable harm would befall “lives of unborn children” were the court to prevent him from enforcing those laws, his office wrote.

Various elected officials have called out the laws’ lack of rape and incest exceptions as problematic, including Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller during oral arguments in the case last November.

“This court sees 10- and 11-year-olds who are impregnated by rape and incest,” Keller told Solicitor General Matthew Kuhn. “That’s not just an issue of preserving life, that’s an issue of safety and health. In most cases, it’s just not safe or healthy for a 10-year-old child to carry a child to term.”

Kuhn admitted that the law did not offer protections for those survivors.

“I don’t want anything that I say from this podium to take away from the criminality or involuntariness of how terrible that is,” he said. But, “you’re right that the trigger law does not have an exception in those tragic circumstances.”