Christian conservatives rally at California Capitol at March for Life to pray against abortion

One day after Gov. Gavin Newsom again declared California a sanctuary state for people in conservative states seeking abortion access, several hundred people gathered at the Capitol for the annual March for Life in support of the anti-abortion movement.

The west side of the Capitol looked like a festival on a warm and sunny Monday afternoon, with crowds flocking to tables representing different churches, crisis pregnancy centers, charities, and political groups. Many held red, heart-shaped balloons, while others carried signs that read, “Women’s Rights Begin In The Womb,” “Stop Abortion Now,” and “Unborn Lives Matter.”

After several speeches and prayers, attendees began their march around the Capitol building just after 1 p.m.

Californians from all over the state rallied with the host organization, the California Family Council, a Christian conservative group, whose president, Jonathan Keller, kicked off the event.

John Gerardi, an attorney from Fresno and the director of the Right to Life of Central California, came to Sacramento from Fresno via bus, with 70 or so other people from the Central Valley. Gerardi said his organization focuses on the economic hardships that lead to people wanting to terminate their pregnancies.

“We want to help the poor, the vulnerable, those in need,” he said Monday afternoon, before the march.

Gerardi, like many at the event, claimed that most women who terminate their pregnancies don’t actually want to, but are led to doing so because of their financial circumstances. (A May 2023 study at the National Institutes for Health found that 60% of women said they “would have preferred to give birth if they had received more support from others or had more financial security.”)

Speakers encouraged attendees to support Republican state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh’s bill, Senate Bill 1368, that would require schools to include crisis pregnancy center information in sexual health resources for students between 7th and 12th grades.

Anti-abortion organizers a political minority in CA, but ‘we have God here’

California has long cemented itself as a pro-abortion rights state — it’s a stance voters took even further in 2022 when they passed Proposition 1 by 68%.

That ballot initiative enshrined abortion access in the state’s constitution after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The California Constitution was amended to include: “The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”

It was a huge hit to the anti-abortion movement in California, though it earned broad support from voters statewide, even in conservative counties. And Newsom has continued to use California’s progressive abortion laws to raise his national profile.

In 2022 he poured tens of thousands of dollars into commercials and ads that aired in Texas and Florida, decrying conservative states’ abortion laws, and he has continued to position California as a sanctuary state for people in conservative states who need to travel to terminate their pregnancies.

On Sunday he released a pro-abortion rights ad that will air in Alabama, and also sat down with MSNBC’s Jen Psaki to talk about the issue, saying he was working on emergency legislation that would allow doctors from Arizona to come to California to provide abortions.

“Not enough attention has been placed on the fact that we’re not just criminalizing women’s access to reproductive care in certain states, now we’re criminalizing their travel,” Newsom told Psaki.

Anti-abortion proponents say that Newsom is trying to bolster his national profile for a predicted presidential bid.

“I wish he’d govern his own state,” said Gerardi, from Fresno.

Representatives from “crisis pregnancy centers” — health clinics typically funded by anti-abortion groups that provide ultrasounds, and ”pregnancy counseling” as well as material goods like diapers, clothes, car seats, and sometimes even housing to low-income pregnant women — were also a huge presence at the event.

Sophia Lorey, the outreach director at the California Family Council and an outspoken Christian conservative who speaks out on the issues of trans girls playing on girls’ sports teams, spoke at the rally, and told The Bee that Newsom is not the champion for women’s rights that he proclaims to be.

“We’re seeing Governor Newsom claim that he is for women, and that’s why he’s pushing the abortion agenda,” she said.

“We’re truly the side that’s pro-women. We’re not just coming along and helping them in their pregnancy,” she said. “We are throwing baby showers for them, we are celebrating the first year, second year, third year birthday parties.”

Lorey and other activists gathered in Sacramento Monday are not deterred by the Democratic super majority in the California Capitol.

“We might feel like we’re in the minority,” Lorey said, but gestured to the crowd around her on the Capitol’s West Side lawn.

“But there are (hundreds) of Californians here just today, and at the end of the day, the California Family Council is a Christian organization, so no matter how many people choose to outnumber us on the opposite here on Earth, we know, ultimately, at the end of the day, we have God, and he is here and can outnumber any human being.”