California Gov. Gavin Newsom has targeted Alabama with a dramatic ad campaign video, which depicts two women attempting to flee the state to obtain an abortion before they are arrested and forced to take a pregnancy test.
In the video, two women cross the Alabama state line to get an abortion while being pursued by law enforcement.
“We’re almost there,” the passenger says. “You’re going to make it.”
Just as she says this, they are pulled over and arrested in a suspenseful scenario framed as a failed escape plan.
A voiceover then says, “Trump Republicans want to criminalize young Alabama women who travel for reproductive care.”
The goal of the organization is to provide a solution to what it calls the country’s “existential struggle for democracy” resulting from “extremist Republicans” who are “attacking the very foundation of a free society.”
At the end of the video, the voiceover tells the audience to take action by visiting righttotravel.org, where people are encouraged to sign a petition against legislation that would prohibit women from crossing state lines to get abortions.
“Republicans are not stopping at overturning Roe vs. Wade,” the website says. “Now they want to lock women and girls down completely, taking away their constitutional right to travel.”
The Right to Travel campaign website points to Alabama, as well as Tennessee and Oklahoma, as a state seeking to prohibit minors from traveling out of state to get an abortion, “no matter if it’s a case of incest or if there is abuse in the family.”
‘Conspiracy Formed in the State’
Although no travel bans on abortions have been enacted yet, The Associated Press reported that Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall implied in a lawsuit that just as abortion is a criminal offense in the state, “a criminal conspiracy formed in the State to have that same act performed outside the State is illegal.”“An elective abortion performed in Alabama would be a criminal offense; thus, a conspiracy formed in the State to have that same act performed outside the State is illegal,” Mr. Marshall wrote in a court filing, according to The Associated Press.
Though no prosecutions have been made against anyone helping someone leave the state to have an abortion, abortion advocates said his words will have a “chilling effect.”
The Yellowhammer Fund, a Southern nonprofit organization that advocates for pro-abortion policies, sued the state in 2023 in an attempt to prevent the attorney general from prosecuting those who traveled outside of the state to get an abortion.
“What the attorney general has tried to do via these threats is to effectively extend Alabama’s abortion ban outside of its borders for Alabama residents,” said Meagan Burrows, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the providers in the lawsuit.
According to the report, the organization ceased providing support services and funding to those seeking abortions for fear of prosecution.
In 2019, Alabama passed the Human Life Protection Act, which criminalizes abortions performed at any stage of pregnancy and doesn’t allow for the exceptions of rape and incest.
‘Effects Doctrine’
According to a 2023 Columbia Law Review report analyzing what a post-Roe v. Wade legal landscape will look like there is very little precedent for states using criminal law to prosecute citizens for crimes committed in other states.“This general rule against extraterritorial application of criminal law, however, has enough gaps to allow prosecution of a wide variety of crimes that take place outside the jurisdiction of a state,” the report stated. “It is beyond the scope of this Article to explore all the twists and turns of this rule, but a few examples suffice to support the general point here.”
One of its exceptions included a California Supreme Court Ruling that ruled states have jurisdiction over crimes committed outside a state if the crime causes harm within the state in what is called the “effects doctrine.”
Citing an example of how a Georgia patient traveling outside state lines to receive an abortion could hypothetically be prosecuted, the report stated, “An aggressive prosecutor could use the effects doctrine to argue that the out-of-state killing has the in-state effect of removing a recognized member of the Georgia community from existence.”
“While prosecutions for murders occurring in another state are rare under this doctrine, states and prosecutors seeking to enforce new criminal laws prohibiting abortion or protecting fetal ‘persons’ may wish to deploy this legal strategy to the maximum extent possible,” the report stated. “This doctrine could apply even more broadly, reaching anyone involved with the killing of a ‘living, distinct’ resident of a state with an abortion ban.”
This would include anyone who drove someone to an out-of-state clinic, according to the report.
‘Unborn Human Life is Sacred’
In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are persons, and those who destroy them can be prosecuted. This ruling followed a lawsuit by parents against an in vitro fertilization clinic where staff had dropped stored embryos.The embryos were killed as a result of them being dropped, according to the report, prompting parents to sue, which ultimately ended in the state Supreme Court’s decision.
Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in his concurring opinion that the state of Alabama has declared that “unborn human life is sacred.”
“We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall for comment.
