Kentucky's Democratic governor hits GOP opponent over abortion with ad featuring incest survivor

• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's campaign tore into his GOP opponent over abortion bans.
• Beshear's ad features an incest survivor who said Cameron's anti-abortion views would have left her without options.
• Cameron previously appeared to flip-flop over his opposition to rape and incest exceptions to bans.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's campaign on Wednesday released a searing critique of his Republican opponent's views on abortion, underlining how the reversal of Roe v. Wade has led Democrats to highlight the issue in previously unthinkable ways.

"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," a woman named Hadley says in the ad released by Beshear's reelection campaign.

Cameron, the commonwealth's Attorney General, is hoping to unseat Beshear in a closely watched off-year election. A former aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Cameron is viewed as a rising star within the Republican Party. Polls show Beshear is one of, if not the most popular Democratic governor in the country. The son of former Gov. Steve Beshear, the Kentuckian has managed to maintain his standing in a state where President Joe Biden is deeply disliked.

Earlier this week, Cameron appeared to flip-flop on his views on exceptions to abortion bans, according to local reports. Once a given for generations of national Republicans, some in the party have begun to question whether there should be exceptions to abortion bans in the cases of rape or incest. Cameron now says he would sign a bill with such exceptions into law if he were elected.

"It's unfortunate that Andy Beshear is running the most despicable campaign in Kentucky history," Cameron said in a video response to the ad. "Now, he lectures us on partisanship and unity then lectures us with disgusting, false attacks."

Cameron previously said that he supported Kentucky laws, neither of which has exceptions in the cases of rape or incest. He is taking a similar tact his party has taken nationally, arguing that Democrats are the true extremists because they refuse to oppose restrictions on rare late-term abortions. It's worth pointing out that similar efforts have been unsuccessful thus far, leading Republicans to reportedly try to overhaul how they talk about abortion.

One of the laws would ban virtually all abortions in the state after six weeks of pregnancy. In June, abortion rights advocates vowed to continue fighting the bans that continue to be in effect. In a major vote, Kentuckians in November 2022 rejected an anti-abortion effort that would have denied any state constitutional protections for abortion rights — one of a string of abortion rights victories since Roe was reversed.