Homecoming Queen

We often wonder if one person can really make a difference in a democracy. When it comes to Hadley Duvall, the answer has been yes, and she may not be done yet. You probably haven’t heard of Duvall if you don’t live in Kentucky. In that state, she was the face of an ad that had a major impact on the state’s gubernatorial race. As a child, Duvall was repeatedly raped by a relative and she decided to tell her story in a commercial when Kentucky moved toward adopting extreme abortion policies. The electorate of Kentucky reacted. So did her college classmates. “One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won. Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president or a leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country. ‘They don’t hate me,’ Duvall, 21, recalled thinking as she accepted a bouquet of red roses from her college president. ‘They made me homecoming queen.'” Caroline Kitchener in WaPo (Gift Article): ‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad. “”I’m not pro-abortion … I’m pro minding your own business.”