A campaign spot flooding TV airwaves in the Sacramento region this election season warns that the incumbent Republican Assemblymember is “backed by anti-abortion extremists” who “know he’ll back their dangerous, anti-choice agenda.”
Residents of the northern Los Angeles suburbs might find their YouTube videos begin with an ominous pre-roll ad declaring the GOP challenger to the local Assemblymember is “too dangerous for our community” because he “would ban abortion.”
And around Palm Springs, a Democratic hopeful is running a commercial that highlights a vote, taken by the Republican senator she is hoping to unseat, against a bill to prohibit criminal prosecution of miscarriages and stillbirths. “Which state Senate candidate will protect reproductive freedom?” the narrator asks….
Rusty Hicks, chairperson of the California Democratic Party, which is funding some of the abortion-related ads for legislative candidates this fall, said politics has become federalized in recent years, so that what’s happening in the presidential race drives the conversation and voters’ attention down the rest of the ballot. Harris’ urgent campaign message has made Californians wonder what could happen with abortion here, he said, and whether state Republicans will go after their rights as well.
“California has always been a leader for the country on these important, top-of-mind issues,” Hicks said. “So it’s completely appropriate for voters to consider candidates who are going to protect and preserve their freedoms at the state level….”
Porsche Middleton, a Citrus Heights city councilmember who is trying to win back an Assembly seat in Sacramento County that Democrats unexpectedly lost in 2022, said that when she brings up her core campaign issues — health care, education and the economy — abortion rights is the first thing that voters ask her about….
“Generally, keeping government out of people’s lives is important to this community. And it’s a working class district where people value quality health care,” said Kipp Mueller, a Democratic lawyer seeking an open Senate seat in northern Los Angeles County that’s currently held by a Republican.
He’s run a cable ad attacking his GOP opponent for “a record that’s loud and clear against reproductive rights,” including opposing bills to prevent criminal prosecution of pregnancy loss and to make it a crime to record patients and providers at an abortion clinic without their consent.
Mueller’s opponent, former Assemblymember Suzette Valladares, released her own digital ad in which she speaks directly to camera about separating her personal “pro-life” beliefs from her approach to legislating, noting that she voted to put the reproductive freedom amendment on the 2022 ballot: “I will stand up for the right of women to make decisions about their own bodies.”
In an Assembly district that stretches through the Riverside County desert, mailers tout that GOP incumbent Greg Wallis of Rancho Mirage, who won by only 85 votes in 2022, is “pro-choice with a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood” — an organization that several candidates told CalMatters polls extremely well in their communities….
The Democrat challenging Wallis — Christy Holstege, another member of the Palm Springs city council — is also running an ad admonishing voters that he was “endorsed by anti-abortion extremists.” Wallis said abortion is probably not an issue he would have brought up before the Supreme Court ruling in 2022 and it is not the priority in his cost of living-focused campaign, but he understands that Californians are worried….
“It’s because we’ve elected state legislators who’ve fought for this,” said Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat locked in a tight race for re-election in the northern Los Angeles suburbs against Republican retired sheriff’s deputy Patrick Lee Gipson. “If we erode that, if we elect extreme anti-abortion people like my opponent, then that continues to build that threat….”
“As a transgender woman, I have had my health care politicized for all of my adult life,” said Middleton, the Palm Springs-area Senate candidate, who could become California’s first openly transgender legislator. “What I hope will also resonate, if they can do it to me, if they can do it to the women of this country, who’s next?”
From Cal Matters
California Democrats have nothing but abortion on their minds. End Abortion Now! Adoption is the option.
I’m personally convinced that Democrat politicians are power-hungry, soul-selling, unprincipled puppets who enrich themselves through the offices of government, and that Democrat voters are morons for voting for them.
To say California politics is basically a dumpster fire is an understatement. Welcome to the inevitable result of a One-Party State, where the opposition really, well, isn’t. It’s imperative we keep this from going national (any more than it already has done).
The Republican Party in California is becoming worthless. A GOP representative has a 100% approval rating from Planned Parenthood? What’s the big difference between him and a Dem in that seat then? Republicans know the jig is up. Prolife is a losing stance when seeking elections. Republicans don’t wield any power or influence in California politics. It’s a 100% Democrat run state. And look where it’s gotten us. Why can’t more of my fellow Californians wise up? I’m almost ready to move out. Just waiting to retire and then cash out the equity in my house and buy a home in a less expensive, nicer, safer, more conservative part of the country. Two more years. I can make it.
When I was in college I also worked in some hospitals. That’s how I learned how to be an assistant in surgery as there was a car accident in front of one hospital and there was no doctor in the hospital as it was the Fourth of July. 8 people were dragged into the hospital by police and others. The E.R. technician called me to help. I was only an orderly, but we did some thing that were probably illegal, like cleansing and suturing wounds, giving pain medications and more. A woman who was on duty to answer the phone started calling doctors. The first one to arrive was a dermatologist. He went right to work doing surgery and I assisted in surgery with him. He saved lives that day by stepping out of his comfort zone and dragging me with him. These people were living human beings! I had to help, or rather, I wanted to help and did!
Those who see no problem with abortion are talking out of both sides of their mouth. On one side they say that they are all for human rights. Out of the other side of their mouth they say they don’t mind declaring that a real, living human being isn’t really human, much like the slaveholders did with African slaves for more than a century It’s good to remember what political party the Southern Slaver holders belonged to. “They aren’t human” is their rallying call and has been for centuries. They will deny it, but they won’t be the first who have denied involvement in racism. It goes back for thousands of years and wasn’t just Hitler and the KKK.
I’ve seen a dead fetus in a steel bowl. I’ve seen people dead from a car accident. I’ve seen people dead from a stabbing and from gunshot. I’m disgusted by it all. There are no exceptions! Killing a human being is called “Murder”.
Fr. Higgins, its sounds as if you followed “the spirit of the law” as St. Paul put it and not the “letter of the law’, which kills. Sometimes we must do what we must do when we must do it, even if it not our job to do so. Many years ago, I had to practically bathe a toddler in the rest room of a park when the class had gone on a trip. He was supposed to be potty-trained but was not. Luckily an older assistant had brought soap and other cleaning supplies. As I was cleaning this child, a younger assistant came in and said, “You should not have to do this.” I replied, “One has to do what one has to do when one has to do it.” The younger woman had a lot to learn – It might not be our job but our duty before God.
Regarding my last post, there were adult women and girls in and coming in and out of that restroom, so they all knew that nothing wrong was being done to that little boy, and that he was just being cleaned up.
You can bet California will try to make it illegal and punishable to think or pray silently outside abortion clinics, just like is the case in the United Kingdom.
I just read that the L.A. Archdiocese reached a historic $880 million clerical child sex abuse settlement, with 1,354 victims. It is the largest single clerical child sex abuse settlement of a Catholic archdiocese. Maybe they ought to dynamite the whole place– and start over, with authentic Catholic clerical leadership and the authentic, true practice of the Catholic Faith. The Catholic Church is in desperate need of good clerical leadership and discipline. I know that many of the victims were boys and young men, raped by gay priests. But were there also any aborted babies of underage girls, raped by Catholic priests?
When you leap off a third-floor balcony, there’s only One Direction you’re gonna go.
I have a lot of Democrat friends. It’s California where there aren’t many Republicans after all.
Not one has said they think abortion is a good thing. Most think it is horrible. But, many do not believe that life begins at conception. If they don’t believe that, they don’t think abortion is a moral issue until several weeks into the pregnancy.
Some believe that life begins at conception but that a woman should be able to decide to proceed with the pregnancy or not, not the government.
Some believe that life begins at conception and should not be allowed except for rape, incest, or life of the mother.
None believe that the mother should be on her deathbed before doctors are allowed to treat her to save her life or that of the baby for fear of losing their license or spending time in jail.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton narrowly won the popular vote. But the Electoral College vote went to Donald Trump. The same thing may happen again.