Newsom's advertising campaign targets GOP states with legal limits
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced Sunday that his political organization, Campaign for Democracy, would run a “six-figure” ad campaign focused on abortion rights in Republican-led states.
The campaign is targeting states where Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would make it a crime to help a minor obtain an abortion without parental consent, which proponents of these bills call abortion trafficking.
The first ad, to run in Tennessee, shows a young woman alone in a hospital room, handcuffed to the bed and crying. She looks around and sees packages labeled “pubic hair combings,” “anal/perineal and rectal swabs” and “genital swabs,” all used in the collection of forensic evidence after a sexual assault.
She calls out, “Help,” and then a voice-over says: “Trump Republicans want to criminalize young women who travel to receive the reproductive care they need. Don't let them hold Tennessee women hostage.” It directs viewers to a website where they can sign a petition against the legislation.
“We've defined the lines of this debate. We've been on the offense, not on the defense,” Newsom said Sunday in an interview on NBC News' “Meet the Press,” adding, “We need to be even more aggressive, I would argue, and that's what this ad represents.”
The Tennessee bill, HB 1895, would make it a felony if an adult other than the parents or legal guardians of a pregnant minor
“recruits, harbors or transports” that person within the state for the purposes of “concealing” an abortion, “procuring” an abortion or “obtaining an abortion-inducing drug” — even if the abortion is performed or the drug obtained in another state. The felony would apply to the adult, not the minor.
The bill says, “It is not a defense to a prosecution under this section that the pregnant minor consented” to the abortion.
The bill would also allow the minor, their parents or legal guardians, or the person who impregnated them (except in cases of rape or incest) to sue the adult in question in a civil action for “the wrongful death of an unborn child that was aborted.”
Campaign for Democracy said it would run ads in other states as “abortion trafficking” bills proceeded. Similar legislation has been introduced in Mississippi and Oklahoma.
The sweeping restrictions on abortion Republican-led states have enacted since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — and the possibility of further restrictions — have fueled Democratic victories up and down ballots, and President Joe Biden's reelection campaign is making them a major focus.