Pro-Life Democrat Presidential Candidate to Air Gruesome Abortion Ad on NBC

A pro-life Democrat presidential candidate is set to air an explicit television advertisement on Monday evening showing the gruesome reality of late-term abortions.

The Terrisa Bukovinac for President Campaign announced that its ad will begin airing in the Boston/New Hampshire market on NBC in Boston during The Jimmy Fallon Show, which runs at 11:35 p.m. ET. The aim of the advertisement is to “disrupt the consciences of the American people, particularly leftists who are complicit in abortion by supporting pro-abortion candidates”  Bukovinac said. 

The 30-second television ad (Warning: Graphic Content) shows horrific images of the remains of five late-term babies allegedly killed in abortions at the Washington Surgi-Center in Washington, DC. The five babies were among 115 aborted babies Bukovinac allegedly discovered in March of last year outside of the abortion clinic while working as founder and executive director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), a left-wing pro-life group.

Bukovinac and the group’s director of activism, Lauren Handy, said they recovered the infants’ bodies from Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services outside of the Washington Surgi-Center on March 25, 2022, after allegedly convincing the waste services driver to give them one of the boxes, telling him it likely contained “dead babies” and that they would give them a proper burial and funeral. Curtis Bay has previously denied any involvement. 

Bukovinac and Handy then allegedly took the box and brought it back to Handy’s apartment. There, they opened the box and the red plastic bag inside to find the remains of 110 mostly first-trimester aborted children. “At the bottom of the box was a clear plastic bag with five more containers,” Bukovinac described at the time. Those allegedly held the remains of five late-term aborted babies featured in the political ad, which PAAU named Christopher X, Harriet, Phoenix, Holly, and Angel. 

“At the bottom of the box was a clear plastic bag with five more containers. One much bigger than the remaining four. Lauren reached into the largest bucket and removed the remains of a beautiful, intact, and nearly full-term baby boy we named Christopher X,” Bukovinac said in a press conference last year. “I think I can speak for both Lauren and I when I say this was the most devastating and soul-crushing experience of our lives. Not even years of anti-abortion advocacy could have prepared us for that moment.”

Bukovinac said they found four more late-term aborted babies with “a range of injuries, including a fully intact girl we named Harriet, who had one eye open and an incision in the back of her neck, her brain suctioned out, and her skull crushed.”  

PAAU believes the abortions were performed by Dr. Cesare Santangelo, who operates out of the Washington Surgi-Center. He is the same abortionist who was recorded in 2012 allegedly saying he would allow babies to die if they were born alive during an abortion. The activists argue the five late-term babies might have been partially aborted or killed after birth in violation of federal law.

Contrary to pro-life activists’ findings, Executive Assistant Chief of Police Ashan M. Benedict said in a news conference after the discovery that the babies “were aborted in accordance with D.C. law, so we are not investigating this incident along those lines.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything criminal in nature right now about that, except for how they got into this house,” Benedict said. “So we’ll continue to look at that.”

News of PAAU’s horrific discovery made its way to Congress. On April 5, 2022, more than 20 members of Congress sent a letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) office, as well as the D.C. metro police, demanding an autopsy and a full investigation into the deaths of the five babies who were allegedly aborted by Santangelo at the Washington Surgi-Center.

Terrisa Bukovinac, founder and executive director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, center right, demonstrates outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 21, 2022. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Bowser responded to the letter by singling out Handy and calling her actions “extremist anti-abortion activity.” 

DCPD told Breitbart News over the summer that the deaths of the five late-term aborted babies are part of “an open investigation.” In September, DCPD told Breitbart News that it is “investigating the circumstances surrounding the discovery of five fetuses in a residence. This case remains under investigation. At this time, there is no investigation into the medical provider.”

Bukovinac’s campaign said airing the images of the five babies is part of its strategy to “engage voters on the atrocity of later abortion during the 2024 presidential election by embracing the power of visual storytelling to expose the brutality of abortion.” The ad condemns the Biden administration and the Democrat Party’s “extreme, out-of-touch abortion platform, which stands at odds with 30 percent of Democrats,” the campaign noted.

Bukovinac announced her candidacy on September 14 outside of Santangelo’s clinic. On her candidate website, Bukovinac said she decided to run because she “can’t keeping hoping someone else will step up to represent us.”

“[S]o I’m taking the stand myself. I’m running to ensure the pro-life Democrats have a future in politics,” her website reads. 

She also notes that she is able to use her candidacy to run ads bringing awareness to the five babies and the brutality of abortion overall because federal law requires any television station with an FCC license to run the ads of a federal candidate. Specifically, FCC regulations stipulate that news stations “have no power of censorship over the material” of campaign ads. 

“I will be a voice for Democrats who reject abortion extremism, and the children that extremism has victimized, with every interview I have and every ad I purchase,” she said. 

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.