WASHINGTON -- Continuing its attacks on the GOP ticket over women's health issues, the Obama campaign released an ad late Friday blasting presumptive GOP vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) for his record on abortion, birth control and Planned Parenthood.
Entitled "The Same," the ad seeks to portray Ryan's stances on women's health as being no different from the positions of Mitt Romney, which the Obama campaign has sharply criticized as being outside the norm.
"He's made his choice, but what choice will women be left with?" the ad intones. "Just like Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan would get rid of Planned Parenthood funding. In Congress, Ryan voted to ban all federal funding for Planned Partenthood and to allow employers to deny women access to cancer screenings and birth control."
As HuffPost has reported, in addition to voting to defund Planned Parenthood, Ryan backed a bill that would give fetuses full personhood rights upon fertilization, and he supported legislation that would have allowed hospitals to deny women emergency abortions. Planned Parenthood has said that Ryan has racked up a zero grade on women's health issues.
"Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have taken extreme positions on issues that matter to women and their families," the Obama campaign said in a statement announcing the ad. "From promising to “get rid of” Planned Parenthood to backing proposals that would take away a woman’s right to choose, women recognize they cannot trust the Romney-Ryan ticket to stand up for them."
Both the Obama and Romney campaigns have tried to portray each other as detrimental to women. The Obama campaign previously released an ad entitled "Important," which included women discussing their concerns over reproductive health under a Romney administration. The GOP candidate, on the other hand, has claimed that Obama has waged "the real war on women" through a weak economy that has left many women jobless.
The new Obama ad will air in swing states Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio, Florida and Iowa, according to the campaign.
UPDATE: 9:20 p.m. -- Amanda Henneberg, a Romney campaign spokeswoman, said this in an email:
"No misleading ad can change the fact that President Obama’s economic policies have devastated women and their families. Under President Obama, hundreds of thousands of women have lost their jobs, poverty among women is the highest in nearly two decades, and half of recent graduates can’t find a good job. Women and their families have struggled in the Obama economy, and Mitt Romney has a plan for a stronger middle class that will jumpstart the economy, bring back jobs, and help women across the country.”
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