California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pick to fill the Senate seat left open after Dianne Feinstein’s death last week is a radical pro-abortion activist who supports abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
Newsom claims to have slated Laphonza Butler to fill the Golden State’s vacant Senate seat because of her two-year track record as the head of EMILY’s List, a radical pro-abortion PAC dedicated specifically to electing anti-life Democrat women. Prior to advancing the left’s radical abortion goals and candidates, Butler was a senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris during her short-lived 2020 presidential campaign and the head of California’s largest union.
“As we mourn the enormous loss of Sen. Feinstein, the very freedoms she fought for — reproductive freedom, equal protection, and safety from gun violence — have never been under greater assault. Laphonza has spent her entire career fighting for women and girls and has been a fierce advocate for working people,” Newsom wrote in his official announcement.
Several prominent Democrats in the state including Reps. Katie Porter, Adam Schiff, and Barbare Lee started gunning for Feinstein’s seat, which she occupied for more than three decades, months before her death.
Newsom, however, chose Butler, whom a recent FEC filing pins as a resident of Maryland, for the position based on her race and her sex. Butler’s proximity to the multimillion-dollar abortion lobby that helped Newsom win office and her distance from the Golden State’s competitive 2024 Senate primary race only contributed to his decision.
Butler is outspoken about her desire to force Democrats’ radical abortion-until-birth agenda on Americans who didn’t elect her. She specifically praised Democrats’ efforts to pass an extreme bill that would have effectively legalized abortion at any point in a woman’s pregnancy.
Financial records show that, under Butler’s leadership during the 2022 election cycle, EMILY’s List affiliates spent $4.4 million on female Democrat candidates like Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, failed Senate candidate Cheri Beasley, and failed Senate challenger Val Demings who support no limits on abortion.
As the face of EMILY’s List, Butler also celebrated abortion activists’ deceptive ballot initiative in Kansas and called the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which struck down the court’s previous decision to block state legislatures from prohibiting abortions, a “brazen assault on women’s reproductive freedom.” She repeatedly claims abortion is “a decision that should be made between a woman and her doctor.”
Newsom’s decision to install an open abortion shill in office was immediately celebrated by far-left activist organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, which hailed Butler as the “first Black lesbian to openly serve in Congress and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent California in the Senate.”
Pro-life groups including SBA Pro-Life America, however, condemned the pick as yet another attempt by Democrats to push their abortion-through-all-nine-months wishlist on Americans who do not want it.
“The abortion lobby spends millions to elect Democrats who back its agenda of abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, paid for by taxpayers. Democrats like Newsom, in turn, are beholden to the abortion lobby. The pay-to-play system couldn’t be more obvious, with an unelected Senate seat as the ultimate reward,” SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “Newsom even passed over staunch pro-abortion candidates who reside in California, in favor of a Beltway insider and the biggest pro-abortion extremist he could find.”
