By DEXTER DUGGAN
California Gov. Jerry Brown may have surprised some when he vetoed a bill requiring abortion medicines to be available at the Golden State’s public university campus clinics, but Gavin Newsom, the Democratic candidate seeking to succeed Brown in the November 6 election, quickly vowed that as governor he would sign such a measure.
The strongly pro-abortion Brown didn’t express opposition to the life-ending procedure with his September 30 veto, but said students already have easy access to nearby abortion services.
Katie Short, vice president for legal affairs for the California-based Life Legal Defense Foundation, told The Wanderer that she thought “Brown drew the line at incurring costs and liabilities for the state for the sake of making abortion convenient. Accessible is one thing; convenient is something else. And he didn’t buy that this was a matter of access.”
The idea that students at University of California or California State University campuses “would be unable to get to abortion clinics just a few miles off campus strains credulity,” she said.
Her daughter, Mary Rose Short, a pro-life activist at California campuses, saw Brown’s action as preferring to avoid a hornet’s nest, “including increasing liability and forcing a bunch of people to participate in abortion who hadn’t sold their souls to the abortion industry, and who wouldn’t cover for it if things went wrong, just to bring abortion a few miles closer.”
Albin Rhomberg, a longtime pro-life activist and observer of the state capitol scene in Sacramento, told The Wanderer that gubernatorial hopeful Newsom claims to be “a practicing Catholic” but is “the present and future figurehead on the radical Culture of Death, mass prenatal murder, sodomy, sexual chaos, and euthanasia-promoting California Democratic Party.”
Rhomberg said that “Newsom is an icon of sodomy and ‘same sex marriage’ since, as mayor of San Francisco, he ostentatiously began performing ‘gay weddings’ at the San Francisco City Hall, in defiance of the laws at that time.” Newsom subsequently was elected lieutenant governor.
However, Rhomberg lamented, “The true scandal is that no California bishop . . . seems able, willing, or motivated to call Gavin Newsom out and indicate that Catholics should not vote” for such an “extremist.” Meanwhile, the prelates “can be heavily involved with ‘immigration,’ ‘social justice,’ etc.,” he said.
In California, he said, “there is mass prenatal murder of about 200,000 . . . babies per year, or about 600 per day, supported by the California Democratic Party, voted into and maintained in office by the largest Catholic population and one of the highest percent (about 33 percent) Catholic populations in the USA.”
Not only do California Catholic bishops not oppose such politicians, Rhomberg said, but they “even give them honors in Catholic churches.”
Brown’s veto message, he said, “was very utilitarian — pointing out that the RU-486 pill abortions are already available near every one” of the 33 campuses, and in each case, “the nearest RU-486 location was a Planned Parenthood location.”
That bill, SB 320, is important, Rhomberg said, “since it would make RU-486 abortions freely available and free of charge to some 775,000 students on the 10 UC and 23 CSU campuses.”
Its author, Democrat Sen. Connie Leyva, “has stated that she will introduce the equivalent of SB 320 at the beginning of the next session, where it would be expected to pass through both the state Senate and Assembly and be ready for signing by Gov. Gavin Newsom, if he is elected,” Rhomberg said.
But, he said, the possibility can’t be dismissed that Newsom’s Republican gubernatorial opponent, John Cox, might win instead.
An October 21 article at Politico noted that Cox surprised many by coming in second to Newsom in heavily Democratic California’s “top two” primary election, easily beating former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The Politico article said: “Cox, to be fair, had an adequate showing in the June primary, placing 577,304 votes behind Newsom, but 840,094 ahead of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, and far ahead of the closest Republican opponent. In California, the top two candidates move on to the general election, regardless of party affiliation, leading nervous conservatives to fret that voters would shut the GOP out of the race entirely.
“By winning pluralities in the state’s interior, as well as Orange and San Diego counties, Cox avoided that ignominious fate,” the article said.
Gibbons Cooney, a San Francisco pro-life activist, recalled for The Wanderer that after Jerry Brown visited with Mother Teresa in 1988 in Calcutta, he reportedly said he couldn’t support abortion after seeing the compassion extended to suffering people with less potential than a healthy fetus.
“Unfortunately,” Cooney added, “faced with the choice of being either a successful politician within the limits allowed by the Democratic Party or being faithful to the Catholic Church, he chose the first.”
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