Stockpiling death

On April 10, the camera-ready but morally crippled governor of my home state proudly announced a milestone: In a statement, Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed California had “secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2 million pills of misoprostol, a safe and effective medication abortion drug.” After an “extremist” federal judge in Texas placed strictures on the abortifacient mifepristone, Newsom vowed the Golden State cache will ensure “Californians continue to have access to safe reproductive health treatments.”

Let’s set aside the rhetorically acrobatic phrase “health treatments” to focus on another: “emergency stockpile.” It’s a phrase we usually associate with civil preparedness. For example, when our sons were in school in San Diego, all parents had to assemble “earthquake kits” in gallon-sized Ziplocs, creating a food stockpile sufficient to survive in the rubble on a three-day supply of pudding cups and Beanee Weenee.

In public health emergencies like COVID, municipalities may create stockpiles of protective gear, donor blood, antibiotics, and other medicines. To earn a merit badge in emergency preparedness, Boy Scouts must show they can cache supplies to deal with exigencies like fires, car crashes, poisonings, or natural disasters.

All such emergencies have two things in common: (1) They are unforeseen. (2) Being prepared always involves saving lives. That’s why Newsom’s formulation, “emergency stockpile,” struck me as odd. What, I wondered, would the “emergency” be? An unforeseen outbreak of dangerous newborn babies? Newsom’s announcement may mark the first time in American history that a head of government has declared the prospect of so much human life not only an emergency, but one requiring a stockpile of poison to snuff it all out.

Let’s decode the governor’s disturbingly antiseptic language: “Two million pills” for “health treatments” really means 2 million dead humans. Two million infants. Two million future preschoolers. Two million future Little Leaguers, prom dates, college grads, dancers, teachers, and firefighters—all dead, with minority deaths disproportionately higher than white ones.

Do advocates of legal abortion have the courage to call it what it is? Mass death as the price of copulating freely. Sacrificing tomorrow’s human beings so that today’s can avoid the inconvenience of sexual restraint.

It seems unfathomably base to not only camouflage such self-seeking with fig-leaf medical jargon, but to also call it virtue. Yet that’s exactly what Newsom and others have done. In February, 21 states declared themselves the Reproductive Freedom Alliance—a high-flying handle with a certain superhero ring. Newsom spearheaded the formation of this death syndicate. I picture him on that day, fists on hips, chin defiant, cape streaming. (Coming to a galaxy near you!)

Since 2004, I have also pictured him, almost inevitably, in the Oval Office. That year, while serving as mayor of San Francisco, Newsom authorized his city-county clerk to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples. His action triggered a nationwide ripple effect that culminated in the 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide. The Obergefell ink wasn’t dry before trans activism began, which is now tearing the country apart.

“We say about California: We’re America’s coming attraction,” Newsom said while campaigning for governor in 2018. “The future happens here first.”

OK, then, what’s happened? After five years under Newsom’s leadership, California is overrun with vagrants, thieves, sex traffickers, and addicts, while ­businesses flee and most working families can’t afford to live here. And though city workers now literally shovel human feces off California streets, Newsom remains a progressive hero with national prospects.

The thought of a Newsom presidency brings to mind a scene from Game of Thrones, when Lord Varys says of the calamitous Lord Baelish, “He would see this country burn if he could be King of the ashes.”