California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vowed Monday evening to build a “firewall” around California in the form of a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion as a right, after a draft Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade (1973) leaked.
The decision, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerns a Mississippi law passed in 2018 that bans all abortions abortions after the first 15 weeks into pregnancy. The case was heard by the Court last fall.
At the time, observers believed that the Court was likely to uphold the Mississippi law, based on the comments of justices in oral arguments. Some, however, believed that there were enough votes on the Court to overturn Roe altogether, returning the question of abortion to the states rather than allowing it to continue as a constitutional right implied in the right to privacy.
After the leak of the opinion, supporters of abortion were furious. Gov. Newsom tweeted that he and other Democrats were going to “fight like hell”:
Our daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers will not be silenced.
The world is about to hear their fury.
California will not sit back. We are going to fight like hell. https://t.co/EhwSWXiZhx
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) May 3, 2022
Gov. Newsom later issued the following press statement:
California will not stand idly by as women across America are stripped of their rights and the progress so many have fought for gets erased. We will fight. California is proposing an amendment to enshrine the right to choose in our state constitution so that there is no doubt as to the right to abortion in this state. We know we can’t trust the Supreme Court to protect reproductive rights, so California will build a firewall around this right in our state constitution. Women will remain protected here.
The use of the term “firewall” is ironic, as California steadfastly opposed the efforts of President Donald Trump to build an actual “wall” on the southern border to protect the U.S. from illegal immigration, such as is currently taking place.
In 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown joked that if Trump actually won the presidential election — then considered a remote possibility — the state would build a “wall” around itself to protect itself from the rest of the nation, as governed by Trump.
Now, California is attempting to build a legal wall to keep the likely decision of the Supreme Court from affecting abortion.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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