California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday unveiled a multistate advert marketing campaign to fight proposals in a number of Republican-controlled states that he mentioned goal to ban out-of-state journey for abortions and associated drugs.
The six-figure advert marketing campaign and an internet petition effort are set to launch Monday, starting with a TV advert focusing on a invoice into account in Tennessee. There, eight Republican male state legislators are main co-sponsors of payments that may create a felony offense of “abortion trafficking,” making it against the law for adults to assist minors get hold of an abortion or drugs to finish early pregnancies with out the consent of oldsters or authorized guardians. The payments additionally would permit civil lawsuits for the “wrongful loss of life of an unborn baby that was aborted.”
Comparable laws is pending in a number of states which have banned or tightly restricted abortion, together with Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama. Newsom plans to take them on with RightToTravel.org, an effort paid for by a nationwide political motion committee he launched final spring with $10 million from his state marketing campaign funds. He has mentioned the trouble, dubbed the “Marketing campaign for Democracy,” is supposed to spice up Democrats and counter a radically conservative GOP agenda.
“We will’t let Trump Republicans maintain ladies hostage,” Newsom mentioned in a information launch asserting the marketing campaign. “These abortion journey bans are a brand new, sick and twisted try by the far proper to manage ladies and take away their freedom. We’ve got to battle again.”
A key sponsor of one of many Tennessee payments, Republican state Rep. Jason Zachary, has mentioned his intent is to guard the rights of oldsters to determine on medical procedures involving their youngsters. He famous that youngsters will not be allowed to be given aspirin or COVID-19 vaccinations with out parental consent.
“This invoice is to guard parental rights … to make sure that no grownup preys on a weak minor who could also be pregnant,” Zachary mentioned in a listening to final week.
Zachary additionally mentioned the invoice doesn’t search to limit interstate journey, an space of federal jurisdiction he mentioned Tennessee lawmakers can’t management, however solely the transporting of minors inside Tennessee.
Tennessee is among the many states which have banned abortion in any respect levels of being pregnant with slim exceptions, that means most pregnant folks in search of an abortion have few in-state choices.
Opponents of the “abortion trafficking” invoice say the intent is to chop off the flexibility to hunt abortions in states the place abortion rights are protected, and one among Zachary’s Republican colleagues reiterated that understanding on the listening to.
Zachary confronted important questioning from Democratic legislators, who famous that probably the most trusted adults in a youth’s life are generally not mother and father however grandparents or different kinfolk, lecturers, nurses or ministers, who can be topic to felony costs for attempting to assist them with an undesirable being pregnant.
Newsom’s new advert, titled “Hostage,” portrays a tearful younger girl handcuffed to a hospital mattress, with a “sexual assault proof assortment equipment” on a close-by desk. She cries out for assist.
“Trump Republicans need to criminalize younger ladies who journey to obtain the reproductive care they want,” the narrator says. “Don’t allow them to maintain Tennessee ladies hostage.”
