San Francisco mayor London Breed became known nationally for reversing her stance on defunding the police and for her sudden determination to clean up city squalor and confront the criminally violent. Now, long before that job is done, she has invented a new crime to prosecute — caring for pregnant women without referring them to an abortion clinic.
There are two crisis pregnancy centers in San Francisco. Mayor Breed, doing the bidding of the abortion lobby, sees them as a threat. All that these centers typically do is help women work through the practical challenges of having a baby. They offer counseling and ultrasounds. They offer free diapers and donated baby items like high chairs and car seats. Most crucially, they offer loving support and counsel.
In a bizarre press conference introducing Proposition O to voters, Breed — a graduate of a private Jesuit school — claimed that pro-life pregnancy centers tell women that “they will go to hell if they get an abortion.” There is no evidence that pregnancy centers do this. Even if they did, it would not justify the measures Breed intends to impose on them. The law would require crisis pregnancy centers to advertise in their offices that they do not provide abortions and advertise where in the city women can obtain abortions. The measure would also seek to raise new funds for abortion providers and to shield them from any new licensing or medical requirements.
Proposition O’s proposed regulation of pro-life pregnancy centers mirrors California’s botched attempt to do so on the state level when it passed the FACT Act. The Supreme Court rightly struck the legislation down because it violated the free-speech rights of pro-lifers. With the passage of Proposition O, Breed would very likely be committing her city to a costly and futile legal protest against the existence of people who don’t agree that abortion is the best thing that our society can offer to a woman facing a difficult pregnancy.
Whatever their feelings on legal abortion, San Franciscans should reject Proposition O as rank misgovernance. It unjustly tyrannizes people who are generously providing free services to the community out of their idealism. Being pro-life is not a crime, not even in San Francisco.