by Jackson Elliott
San Francisco’s blacklisting of 22 states with pro-life laws is only a “PR tactic” that indicates growing desperation within the abortion industry, the head of an activist group based in the city says.
“I don’t think [San Francisco’s government] has any real power with this boycott,” Terrisa Bukovinac, executive director of Pro-Life San Francisco, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “It’s a PR tactic.”
“This [resolution] is an attempt to fire up their base, but I don’t think that even they expect this to stand up to actual scrutiny in a courtroom,” Bukovinac said.
The resolution also could be a PR tactic to attract businesses outside the state, said John Gerardi, executive director of Right to Life of Central California.
“A lot of California’s wokeness is in a way that seems to benefit massive corporations,” Gerardi told The Daily Signal. “San Francisco is riding the coattails of that mindset.”
San Francisco’s boycott resembles a 2017 California state government ban on official travel to eight states with laws related to LGBT individuals that California officials found discriminatory, he said in a phone interview.
Gerardi said California uses what officials consider progressive laws to keep some large corporations in the state despite high taxes. Taking a dramatic stance for abortion could attract left-leaning corporations, he said.
Gerardi said the new resolution “feels silly,” especially considering San Francisco’s business ties to China.
One example: A group called ChinaSF works closely with San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development to bring Chinese companies to San Francisco and send San Franciscan companies to China.
“It’s pretty hypocritical that China is somehow less toxic in the eyes of the San Francisco City Council than Georgia,” Gerardi said.
Pro-Life San Francisco describes its mission as to “Educate community, connect like-minded people with resources and resist the influence of the abortion industry in the most pro-abortion citys in the world through non-violent direct action,” Bukovinac said.
As it turns out, Bukovinac is an atheist and registered Democrat who wasn’t involved in the pro-life movement until after someone challenged her for not standing up for unborn babies the same way she stood up for animal rights.
Bukovinac told The Daily Signal that San Francisco’s boycott of pro-life states is similar to the city’s recently revoked resolution designating the National Rifle Association as a terrorist group and blacklisting contractors with NRA connections. When the NRA challenged the resolution, the city backed down.
The blacklist forbids city government employees from traveling to the 22 listed states or making deals with businesses headquartered there.
Why do San Francisco officials appear to want to energize the pro-choice base?
Bukovinac said the abortion industry feels threatened by the possibility that Planned Parenthood could be indicted by the Department of Justice after two years of investigating whether the organization sold the organs and other body parts of unborn babies.
From 2013 to 2015, Planned Parenthood received $1.5 billion in federal taxpayer funding, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The abortion industry is “sinking,” Bukovinac said. “I think everybody in [industry] leadership right now understands the very real potential for a looming … indictment from the DOJ over the body parts issue.”
Although Planned Parenthood has tried to keep the federal investigation quiet, Bukovinac said, “Their medical directors are being cross-examined in a public courtroom” as part of the San Francisco trial of journalists and pro-life activists Sandra Merritt and David Daleiden.
California accused Merritt and Daleiden of 15 felonies after the pair from the Center for Medical Progress filmed undercover footage of Planned Parenthood officials appearing to trade in baby body parts.
In a preliminary hearing last month, a Planned Parenthood official admitted to the harvesting of baby body parts for sale.
Although San Francisco has a reputation as an abortion stronghold, many residents are changing their minds, Bukovinac said.
“The pro-life movement in this area has grown exponentially,” she said. “We have more than a dozen people organizing in the Bay Area right now. We are millennial-led, we are seeing a lot of crossover from the animal-rights community and from the Catholic community, and we’ve all been able to come together in a bipartisan way.”
The Daily Signal sought comment from Planned Parenthood in San Francisco, but it did not respond by publication time.
Bukovinac said that people do not have to become conservative Christians to reject abortion.
She traces her own opposition to abortion to the idea that “If we don’t want to be killed, then we shouldn’t be killing other people,” she said. “Killing other human beings is not progressive.”
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Jackson Elliott is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
Photo “Pro-Choice Rally” by internets_dairy CC2.0
