(LifeSiteNews) — California First Lady Jennifer Siebel Newsom is back in the public eye for resurfaced comments from a previously-overlooked interview in which she accused conservative Christians of “pulling us back as a country.”
In 2022, the wife of far-left Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom sat down for an interview on “The Issue Is” with Elex Michaelson about her then-new documentary “Fair Play,” which discussed male participation in household work and caregiving. The show aired less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The segment and documentary were largely overlooked at the time, but have drawn new notice in light of Mrs. Newsom’s attacks on the press for being insufficiently sensitive to the so-called “war on women” and allegations of enriching herself through her feminist nonprofits. In the interview, she attempted to define “pro-life” away from legal protection for the preborn.
“So many progressives are leaning into redefining what pro-life is really about, and that’s what we’re doing in California,” the state first lady said. “You know, pro-life is about prenatal care and universal preschool and universal after-school and universal healthcare and taking care of foster kids and feeding kids universal meals and childcare. Like, that’s pro-life. It’s not about conception.”
“They’re living in this Evangelical, conservative silo that, ultimately, is just pulling us back as a country to a time and a place where we don’t deserve to be and we’re not gonna be,” she continued. “Because honestly, young women and fathers of daughters are awake now, and they’re woke, and they’re not going to let us go back.”
Logan Sekulow of the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) responded that “Jennifer is completely out of touch with millions within her own state. And if the number is that high in California, how many does she oppose nationally? And how will that affect her husband’s eventual presidential bid? Radical sentiments like hers may play well with the far-Left base in the primary.”
Contrary to Siebel Newsom’s allegations, those who work to protect the preborn also work to serve mothers in need and born babies – and frequently meet bitter resistance from the Newsoms’ pro-abortion allies for doing so.
Crisis pregnancy centers, for example, have long provided low-income women with a wide variety of services, including ultrasounds, basic medical care, adoption referrals, parenting classes, and children’s supplies that help mitigate the fears and burdens that lead some to choose abortion. For that reason, they have long been a target of left-wing rage, with attacks often focusing on claims that they deceive women, both about abortion and about their own services. But the pro-life contentions most often derided as “misinformation” are in fact true, and accusations of self-misrepresentation typically refer to little more than the fact that ads for them appear in online searches for the term “abortion.”
The abortion movement is notoriously hostile to such alternatives to abortion, from publicity campaigns to malign crisis pregnancy centers, to attempts to strip medical licenses from pro-life doctors, to violence and threats against pregnancy centers that under the Biden administration were far less likely to be prosecuted than purported cases of anti-abortion violence.
By contrast, the so-called “reproductive health” industry consistently prioritizes abortion over actual women’s health. Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report revealed that its affiliates across the nation took in $699.3 million in government “health services” reimbursements and grants, accounting for 39 percent of its total revenue during that period. At the same time, the abortion chain committed 392,715 abortions – yet its non-abortive procedures, such as pap tests and cancer screenings, continued to decline as percentages of its overall business.