Governor Gavin Newsom is cementing California’s reputation as a haven for abortion, and his influence reaches far beyond the Golden State. While Newsom has carried out deplorable billboard campaigns luring women to California for abortion in the past, his recent RightToTravel.org ad campaign is his most deceptive – and dangerous – to date.
Three Republican-controlled states – Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Alabama – are considering bills that would prohibit minor girls from being taken out of state for an abortion without their parents’ knowledge and consent. Newsom has made it his mission to undermine their efforts to protect children.
Referred to as “abortion trafficking” laws, the proposals make it illegal for an adult to help minor girls obtain abortion pills or leave their state to get a surgical abortion without parental consent. The bills safeguard basic parental rights – yet Newsom protests that Republicans “want to lock women and girls down completely, taking away their constitutional right to travel…these are states that basically want to imprison women and young girls.”
These statements would be absurd if there were not so much at stake. We are talking about minor girls – children who cannot legally get their ears pierced, receive so much as an aspirin at school, or purchase a plane ticket without their parents’ consent. Yet Governor Newsom has launched an entire initiative that encourages adults – in many cases strangers – to take children thousands of miles from their homes for a California abortion.
Both chemical and surgical abortion carry inherent risks, especially for young girls. What happens if a child suffers complications while taking abortion drugs without her parents’ knowledge? Or what if a child sustains an injury from an out-of-state abortion? Who will ensure that she receives prompt medical treatment? And who is going to pick up the pieces when she realizes that the “safe and easy” abortion she’s been promised ends the life of an innocent human being?
Newsom’s abortion trafficking campaign, is paid for by his “Campaign for Democracy,” a new lobbying group (PAC) with a mission to turn red states blue – ironically, by attacking “authoritarian” leaders. It’s hard to imagine someone more authoritarian than California’s governor, who thinks he is uniquely qualified to determine what is best for minor children and believes parental involvement in life-altering and life-ending decisions is tantamount to imprisonment.
The website ads and billboards are part of a statewide initiative to funnel girls and women from other states into California’s abortion pipeline. The initiative is the brainchild of the California Future of Abortion Council (CA FAB), a coalition of abortion “allies” that pushed the legislature to appropriate $200 million dollars in taxpayer funding to expand abortion in the state that already offers virtually unrestricted abortion. The fund is continuously appropriated, meaning taxpayers will be funding the abortion industry for years to come. Newsom boasts that he is “proud to have helped advance the California Future of Abortion Council” – using taxpayer dollars, of course.