Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has pushed his opposition to Kentucky’s abortion ban to the forefront of his reelection campaign by linking his Republican challenger to an extreme scenario of the strict law — requiring young victims of rape or incest to carry their pregnancies to term.

Beshear’s campaign released a TV ad featuring a prosecutor denouncing the law’s lack of exceptions for rape or incest. It attacks GOP nominee Daniel Cameron for supporting the measure, which bans all abortions except when carried out to save a pregnant patient’s life or to prevent a disabling injury.

The ad represents a reversal of roles in this socially conservative state — where Republicans have traditionally gone on offense in statewide races touting their opposition to abortion. Now, Beshear has become the aggressor against his anti-abortion GOP challenger — signaling a willingness among Democrats to press the issue since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a nationwide right to abortion last year. The ad is airing in conservative, rural regions as well as in more progressive, urban and suburban areas.

“When a woman or girl becomes pregnant from rape, the trauma is unimaginable,” Erin White, a prosecutor from Kentucky’s most populous county, says in the ad. “Daniel Cameron thinks a 9-year-old rape survivor should be forced to give birth. Nobody — no child — should ever have to go through that.”

Beshear’s campaign pointed to a Louisville Courier Journal article from 2022 indicating that the two youngest patients in the state to receive an abortion over those previous two years were both 9 years old. In 2021, 34 girls in Kentucky who were 15 years old or younger received abortions, the newspaper reported.

In his response, Cameron stood by his steadfast opposition to abortion. His campaign said in a statement that Beshear “stands with Joe Biden and the most extreme wing of the Democrat Party on abortion,” pointing to the governor’s opposition to bills restricting abortion.