Simply put, zero-based strategies don't work. It didn't work for Covid, and in California, it's not working for abortion. In fact, it's had the exact opposite affect -- activating abortion-rights advocates & politicians, and serving as a robust hot-button issue to fire up the base and push the time-limit for abortion to the extreme.

What happened in California is akin to squeezing a rubber balloon; while the intent might have been to pop it, instead it caused the air to be displaced and balloon out on the other side. In November 2022, California voters approved a ballot proposition (SCA 10, labeled Proposition 1 on the ballot) which codified the right to an abortion and -- through lack of defined limits as in current law - ambiguously might allow it all the way up to the time of birth by default (opinions vary.) You can learn more here and here.

Overturning Roe v. Wade was a non-starter in California, where a woman's right to an abortion was never under ANY threat. But now abortion proponents have latched on to threats elsewhere and taken California down the rabbit hole of allowing abortion through all nine months. 

A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans favor at least some limits on abortion. That level of support is something that pro-life groups should leverage. Codify a reasonable limit on abortion for months 4-9, then work through other means to close the gap in months 1-3 (via crisis counseling, personal mentoring, and financial & temporal support of programs that support new/unwed mothers.) 
 

Our stance is a pragmatic one; work to save life for later-term pregnancies via legislation and codification, and then close the remaining first-trimester gap via a cultural shift (in particular, teen girls, to get them to see pregnancy not as a nuisance, but as the blossoming of life itself.) 

 

The issue of abortion is polarizing to our nation. As such, I espouse a societal policy position to allow abortion through 13 weeks (most of Western Europe is 12-14 weeks.) While I believe in the sanctity of life for the pre-born as a deeply-held personal belief, I also believe that two things can exist simultaneously -- an earnest personal belief tempered by a non-polarizing, societal policy position.


[NOTE:  If you're still bristling at our stance after reading our position, we invite you to read our other page making the case to limit abortion to 13 weeks. It includes a video that describes in graphic detail the carnage from a second-trimester abortion.

Let's strive to first get California to a time-limit that most people agree on, and then work to close the remaining first-trimester gap via education, counseling, and cultural shift. The zero-based abortion strategy has failed in California. It's time to shift to a viable, pragmatic strategy that serves to actually close the gap, not widen it.]