San Francisco voters are poised to decide the fate of a ballot measure that would expand abortion in the city during the upcoming election.
Mayor London Breed stood alongside pro-abortion leaders at a Planned Parenthood facility in June to announce Proposition O, which Breed herself co-authored. Also called the “San Francisco Reproductive Freedom Act,” the proposition would loosen zoning laws, allowing abortion facilities to operate on any floor in a building in a non-residential zone, establish an official Department of Health website pointing pregnant women to abortion businesses, establish an “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day” in the city, and establish a “Reproductive Rights Fund” to help fund abortion.
It would also block city funding for any “reproductive health care facility” that does not commit or refer for abortions, and it would directly target the city’s pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) by using taxpayer funds to install signs outside these facilities saying they are “limited services pregnancy organizations.”
Critics of the ballot measure fear these signs would invite vandals to target these centers — a legitimate fear, as PRCs have been the victims of pro-abortion violence across the country.
City leaders say the measure is necessary to strengthen abortion against any future legislation that would limit the killing of preborn children. “We are battening down the hatches,” said Kimberly Ellis, director of the city’s Department on the Status of Women, “Because if there’s one thing we have learned from the pandemic, and from the fall of Roe v. Wade, it is that this is not a drill.”
Those campaigning against the measure include a number of pro-life groups and the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
“This measure goes way beyond ‘pro-life versus pro-choice,'” stated Melanie Salazar, the executive director of the nonprofit Pro-Life San Francisco. “Prop O will discriminate against life-affirming healthcare facilities that San Francisco citizens depend on and lessen the number of services they can provide to the community.”
Prop. O needs a simple majority of votes in the November 5th election to pass.
