City of San Francisco cuts business ties with nearly half the states in the country because of their 'restrictive abortion laws'

The city of San Francisco will no longer conduct business with 22 states that have laws limiting the ability of women to obtain abortions, city official announced Wednesday, according to Newsweek.

 

San Francisco is severing business ties with nearly half the states in the country over laws officials said limit "reproductive freedom"—specifically, the freedom to kill an unborn child deep into a pregnancy.

"Every day in this country, women's reproductive rights are threatened, and we have to fight back," San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a statement. "Just as we restricted spending with states that have laws that discriminate against LGBTQ people, we are standing up against states that put women's health at risk and that are actively working to limit reproductive freedoms."

City employees will be prohibited from business travel to states on the list, and from making deals with companies headquartered in those states. The city ordinance targets states that have laws limiting abortion before viability—widely considered to be 24 weeks. From the city's statement:

"In recent years, states across the country have passed a growing number of restrictive abortion laws. In accordance with Supervisor Brown's ordinance, we identified state laws that prohibit abortion before viability and have recommended that these states be added to the City Administrator's list," said Dr. Emily Murase, Director of the Department of the Status of Women. "If any company that is headquartered in the listed states wants to continue doing business with the City, we encourage them to stand up for reproductive rights and advocate for a change to their state law. We applaud Supervisor Brown for her leadership in authoring this ordinance and for continuing San Francisco's long history of fighting for women's rights."

The states are mostly midwestern or southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The ordinance will go into effect Jan. 1, 2020.