California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday unveiled a multi-state ad campaign to combat proposals in several Republican-controlled states that he said aim to ban out-of-state travel for abortions and related medications.
The six-figure ad campaign and online petition effort are scheduled to launch Monday, starting with a TV ad targeting a bill under consideration in Tennessee. There, eight male Republican state legislators are the primary sponsors of bills that would create a criminal offense of “abortion trafficking,” making it a crime for adults to help minors obtain abortions or medications to end early pregnancies without the consent of parents or legal guardians. The bills would also allow civil lawsuits to be brought for “the wrongful killing of an unborn child who was aborted.”
Similar legislation is pending in several states that have banned or severely restricted abortion, including Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama. Newsom plans to confront them through RightToTravel.org, an effort funded by the national political action committee he launched last spring with $10 million of his state campaign money. He said the effort, which he called the “Campaign for Democracy,” aims to strengthen Democrats and counter the Republican Party's radically conservative agenda.
“We cannot allow Trump Republicans to hold women hostage,” Newsom said in a press release announcing the campaign. “The abortion travel ban is a new, sick and twisted attempt by the far right to control women and take away their freedom. We have to fight back.”
One of the lead sponsors of one of the Tennessee bills, Republican Rep. Jason Zachary of Tennessee, said its goal is to protect the rights of parents to decide about medical procedures related to their children. He noted that children are not allowed to be given aspirin or COVID-19 vaccines without parental consent.
“This bill is intended to protect parental rights … to ensure that no adult assaults a vulnerable minor who may be pregnant,” Zachary said at a hearing last week.
Zachary also said the bill does not seek to restrict interstate travel, an area of federal jurisdiction he said Tennessee lawmakers cannot control, but only the transportation of minors within Tennessee.
Tennessee is among the states that have banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy with limited exceptions, meaning that most pregnant women seeking an abortion have few options within the state.
Opponents of the “abortion trafficking” bill say the intent is to cut off the ability to seek an abortion in states where abortion rights are protected, and one of Zachary's Republican colleagues echoed that understanding at the hearing.
Zachary faced critical questioning from Democratic lawmakers, who pointed out that the most trusted adults in young people's lives are sometimes not parents but grandparents, other relatives, teachers, nurses or ministers, who could face criminal charges for trying to help them with an unwanted problem. Pregnancy.
Newsom's new ad, titled “Hostage,” depicts a crying young woman handcuffed to a hospital bed, with a “sexual assault evidence collection kit” on a nearby table. She screams for help.
“Trump Republicans want to criminalize young women who travel to get the reproductive care they need,” the narrator says. “Don't let them hold Tennessee women hostage.”
