California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s super PAC is launching a new TV ad in Tennessee this week targeting “Trump Republicans” on abortion.
The ad from Campaign for Democracy, which was shared first with NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” features a young woman handcuffed to a hospital bed, screaming for help while a narrator tells viewers, “Trump Republicans want to criminalize young women who travel to receive the reproductive care they need. Don’t let them hold Tennessee women hostage.”
“These guys are not just restricting the rights, self-determination to bear a child for a young woman, but they’re also determining their fate as it relates to their future in life by saying they can’t even travel,” Newsom told “Meet the Press” on Saturday.
Campaign for Democracy plans to run the ad in Tennessee because of two bills active in the state legislature — one in the state House and one in the state Senate — that would create the crime of “abortion trafficking,” or helping minors obtain abortions without parental consent.
The bills propose that any violation of the law, which would criminalize “recruiting, harboring, or transporting a pregnant minor, within the state, for the purpose of concealing an abortion from the minor’s parents,” would constitute a Class C felony, which carries a mandatory minimum six-year prison term.
“These travel restrictions [are] modeled after a version that passed and Idaho is now being proposed in Tennessee and Oklahoma and Mississippi,” Newsom said.
“That’s how serious this moment is. And we need to be even more aggressive,” he continued.
The ad comes just one week after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are people, imperiling in vitro fertilization and other forms of fertility care in the state.
“It’s not just a war on travel. It’s not just a war on reproductive health care. It’s also war on women more broadly defined,” Newsom said.
Campaign for Democracy plans to run similar ads in other states where abortion travel bans are being considered, like Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama.
