‘Texas doesn’t own your body. You do,” a billboard image reads with an image of a woman who has her hands chained behind her back. It’s part of a billboard-ad campaign launched by California governor Gavin Newsom in Indiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas. Another of the ads has a photo of a young woman who looks sad and scared. The text reads: “Need an abortion? California is ready to help.” There’s a link to California’s abortion information website. There’s also a quote from the Bible: “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these” (Mark 12:31). According to the governor of the Golden State, who is up for reelection this year, the Golden Rule commands women in unplanned pregnancies to travel to California to end the life of their developing babies.
The governors of some of these states are Republican governors who are also up for reelection this year. Elections often don’t bring out the best in people. But on an issue so contentious and so intimate, images of women in chains are not a help to anyone. In recent decades, proponents of abortion — which is a fair description of a politician claiming that the Bible has something to do with his desire to make California an abortion destination, to rival New York as the abortion capital of the country — have increasingly hidden behind euphemisms, including “choice” and “reproductive rights” and “health care” and “women,” to avoid the unpopular word “abortion.” That’s become a little harder since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
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