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

Republicans are trying to recast abortion as a winning issue after they underperformed in last year’s midterms. Illustration: The Guardian/Mike Caudill/AP

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.”