Obama campaign to focus on women to contrast GOP ticket

The Obama campaign is putting women's issues front and center next week to contrast President Obama's position with presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan.

Seizing on the controversy surrounding Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), the campaign will launch the “Romney-Ryan: Wrong for Women” effort, which will seek to portray the Republican ticket as “too extreme” for women and families.

The first event on Saturday in Las Vegas will feature actress Natalie Portman, Cecilia Muñoz and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Other attendees include Georgetown Law graduate Sandra Fluke.

The events are expected to take place all week in cities throughout the country, including Raleigh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Manchester and Tampa, where the GOP is convening for the Republican National Convention.

“Unlike President Obama, who signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act during his first days in office and has built a strong record of fighting for policies that strengthen economic and health security for women and their families, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have shown they won’t stand up for equal pay and women’s access to health care,” the Obama campaign said in a press release on Friday. “They would roll back the clock and return women to the exact same failed policies that caused the economic crisis in the first place. American women can’t trust the Romney-Ryan ticket to stand up for them.

The Obama campaign found an opening to bring women's issues back into the campaign rhetoric after Akin's controversial comments on rape and abortion earlier this week.

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