Obama campaign airs Planned Parenthood ad: 'This is not the 1950s'

President Obama's campaign, which recently bought $77 million worth of air time leading up to election day in key battleground states, started airing this new ad in eight of them this morning - a spot that hits Mitt Romney hard over calling for defunding Planned Parenthood.

The ad features a series of women talking about Romney, beginning with one calling him "really out of touch with the average woman's health issues." The next one begins, "This is not the 1950s. Contraception is so important to women..."

And then, "I don't remember anyone as extreme as Romney." The final line is from the woman featured at the beginning saying, "I think Romney would definitely drag us back."

The ad is cut with footage of Romney saying at a campaign stop he would cut off funding for Planned Parenthood, and telling an interviewer "Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that."

Women are among the voters with whom Romney has struggled in a number of polls, and suburban women are the swing vote that the Obama campaign has made clear it's reaching out to for months. The belief in Chicago is that Romney did himself enough damage in the primaries that his words, as used in the ads, will make it hard to come back.

Painting Romney as "extreme" has been part of the effort for months, one that Republicans have argued doesn't work because he doesn't strike people that way.

Talking about Planned Parenthood and the move among congressional Republicans to defund it over abortion provisions has not been a major feature of the campaign for months, but Obama's campaign is reviving it ahead of the GOP convention and the debates.

UPDATE: Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul responded with a statement that accused Obama's campaign of false attacks aimed at distracting, but didn't address the ssubstance of the ad: "One day after the unemployment rate increased and we reached 42 consecutive months with a jobless rate greater than eight percent, it is not surprising that the Obama campaign would release a false ad in an attempt to distract from the effects of the President’s failed policies. Dishonest political attacks will not change the fact that President Obama has not turned around the economy, and his policies have hurt women and families all over the country. We tried it the President’s way, and middle-class workers have paid the price. Mitt Romney has a Plan for a Stronger Middle Class that will jumpstart the economy and bring back millions of jobs.”

Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter for Politico.