“Don’t let them hold Tennessee women hostage,” the narrator says, urging viewers to take action and directing viewers to a website. The site currently includes a petition against abortion travel bans and once the state-by-state campaigns launch, will include ways for people to take action against the legislation.
Several red-state officials are moving swiftly to impose fines and legal penalties for transporting people seeking abortions over state lines. Newsom, who previously ran abortion-related TV spots and billboards and pushed to make California a legal “sanctuary” for abortions, said the conditions in conservative states are “much more pernicious than they even appear.”
“These guys are not just restricting the rights, self-determination to bear a child for a young woman,” Newsom, a Democrat and top Biden campaign surrogate, said on the Sunday program. “But they’re also determining their fate as it relates to their future in life by saying they can’t even travel.”
He pointed to Tennessee, as well as Oklahoma and Mississippi, and said the attorney general in Alabama wants to criminalize travel not just for children, but for adults seeking reproductive care. The latter refers to a court filing that described out-of-state abortion travel as “criminal conspiracy.”
“That’s how serious this moment is,” Newsom added. “And we need to be even more aggressive, I would argue. And that’s what this ad represents.”
Protecting abortion access is a central pillar in Democrats’ efforts to retain the White House and win down-ballot this fall. Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos created through IVF are considered children under state law. While former President Donald Trump disagreed with that ruling, he has expressed support for a 16-week abortion ban.
Newsom’s latest move comes from his Campaign for Democracy, a committee he seeded with millions of dollars in donations leftover from a failed recall of him in 2021. It also focuses on gun control. Running ads far outside California has become a familiar move by the governor, who has bolstered his national profile through high-profile fights with Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Newsom rented billboards in several Republican-led states. The ambitious governor made another unorthodox play ahead of the midterm election last fall, eschewing ads for his own, easy reelection effort and instead pouring millions of dollars into TV spots for 2022’s Proposition 1, a measure that enshrined the right to abortion and contraceptives in California’s constitution.
Last year, Newsom led a network of Democratic governors in 20 states, dubbed the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the court’s Dobbs decision.
California has nevertheless struggled to increase access to abortion within its own borders.
Newsom’s post-Roe abortion foray began with criticism of his own party for not being aggressive enough about what he calls a “rights regression” led by the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. He said in the interview that aired Sunday that the high court set the tone for the debate and that the current situation is “not just a war on travel.”
“It’s not just a war on reproductive healthcare,” Newsom said. “It’s also a war on women more broadly defined, including, as we know, contraceptives.”
While he was initially critical of his own party, drawing the ire of the White House, Newsom said its leaders are now responding with more force. He credited President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has made prioritizing abortion access a centerpiece of her portfolio, with leading that fight.
“We’ve defined the lines of this debate,” Newsom said. “We’ve been on the offense, not on the defense. The Republican Party is on the defense on this issue.”
Gavin Newsom launches red-state abortion ads over ‘war on travel’
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