‘Need an abortion? California is ready to help.’ The story behind new Columbia billboard

South Carolina is in the crosshairs of California’s Democratic governor over its restrictive abortion policies.

A billboard that popped up recently on Gervais Street in downtown Columbia promotes California’s abortion services and directs abortion seekers to a website launched recently by California Gov. Gavin Newsom that provides information on accessing abortion in that state.

“Need an abortion?” the billboard reads in large block letters. “California is ready to help.”

The familiar bible passage, “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these,” is inscribed on the billboard below the URL for California’s abortion website.

Newsom, a Democrat who is running for reelection this year, announced last week that he’d paid for billboards in seven of the most restrictive anti-abortion states in the country to promote California’s abortion services to people outside of the state.

“To any woman seeking an abortion in these anti-freedom states: CA will defend your right to make decisions about your own health,” he tweeted.

Newsom then tagged the governors of Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and Oklahoma in tweets with photos of billboards he said would be going up in their states.

When asked Tuesday about the billboard, a spokesman for Gov. Henry McMaster invoked an old state slogan.

“We’ll stick with ‘Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places,’” Brian Symmes said. “Because that’s what South Carolinians have in mind when they think about South Carolina.”

In total, Newsom’s reelection campaign spent $100,000 to run 18 billboard ads across those seven states, Politico reported. It wasn’t immediately clear how many billboard ads Newsom bought in South Carolina, where they are located or how long they will stay up.

The billboard on Gervais Street is situated between Henderson and Pickens streets, directly above a picture frame shop and across from a Hilton Garden Inn. It’s about a block from the University of South Carolina School of Law and visible to westbound drivers traveling toward the South Carolina State House.

State lawmakers last year passed a so-called “heartbeat bill,” which prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected – typically around six weeks of pregnancy – and recently have been debating further restrictions in wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The six-week ban, which had been blocked by federal courts since 2021, briefly went into effect after Roe’s reversal but was suspended again last month.

The South Carolina Supreme Court on Aug. 17 issued an order temporarily blocking the law while litigation challenging its constitutionality proceeds. Oral argument in the case is scheduled for Oct. 19.

Molly Rivera, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, one of the groups suing the state over its six-week abortion ban, said South Carolina certainly is “hostile” to abortion rights and reproductive health care, but questioned whether a woman in the state would actually travel across the country for abortion services.

South Carolinians seeking abortions in the aftermath of Roe’s reversal have typically traveled to North Carolina for care, she said.

“Will people be forced to travel across the country for abortion care? That’s not out of the question, but that’s not the reality we’re in right now,” Rivera said. “We know South Carolinians struggle to put together travel plans just to drive to Fayetteville (North Carolina) or Charlotte, and that’s just a few hours. So I can’t imagine patients being able to put together the funds needed for a flight to California.”

Planned Parenthood’s national office recently launched its own billboard campaign to promote abortion access. The reproductive health care organization announced Monday it would run billboards at airports in New York and California and along highways at the Maryland-Pennsylvania, New Mexico-Arizona, New Mexico-Texas and Colorado-Wyoming borders.

Additional billboards in other states that protect abortion access are planned to roll out in the coming weeks and months, the organization said.

“Every single day, patients are leaving their homes and driving hundreds of miles across state lines to get the care they need,” Planned Parenthood president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement. “As more bans take effect, it is critical that people know where and how they can get care, and understand that no matter where you live, abortion access is an issue that affects us all.”