California governor launches ads to fight abortion travel bans
SACRAMENTO, California — California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an advertising campaign on Sunday to fight proposals in several Republican-controlled states to ban out-of-state travel for abortions and other reproductive care.
The multi-state ad campaign and an online petition will launch Monday, starting with a TV commercial about a measure being considered in Tennessee. The so-called “abortion trafficking bill,” sponsored by Republican Party lawmakers, would make it a crime for an adult to recruit, harbor or transport a minor to obtain an abortion without parental consent.
Newsom told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that similar restrictions, modeled on a law already passed in Idaho, are also being proposed in Oklahoma and Mississippi.
“The circumstances are far more dire than they even appear,” Newsom said. “These guys aren’t just limiting a young woman’s rights and self-determination to have a child. But they also decide their fate when it comes to their future in life, saying they can’t even travel.”
People who support the measure in Tennessee say it could criminalize not only driving a minor to have an abortion, but also providing information about nearby abortion services or reporting which states have looser abortion laws. to have.
Republican state Rep. Jason Zachary, who is co-sponsoring the bill, has called it “simply a parental rights bill.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, anti-abortion advocates have pushed states to ban abortion and find ways to prevent pregnant women and girls from crossing state lines to obtain the procedure.
Idaho has already passed a so-called “abortion trafficking” law. The first measure of its kind made it illegal to obtain abortion pills for minors or help them leave the state for an abortion without parental knowledge and consent.
Newsom, a Democrat widely seen as a future presidential candidate, said his efforts on RightToTravel.org will be paid for by a national political action committee he created last spring with $10 million from his state campaign funds. The effort, called the “Campaign for Democracy,” is intended to boost Joe Biden and other Democrats and the conservative Republican agenda, he said.
Democrats and left-wing advocacy groups view abortion rights as a key motivator for voters in the upcoming presidential elections and are fighting for control of Congress.
They believe that supporting abortion access could be a winning issue as the debate broadens to include growing concerns about miscarriage care, access to medications, access to emergency care and in vitro fertilization treatments. A ruling this week by the Alabama Supreme Court jeopardized future access to IVF.