The Catholic archbishop of San Francisco is asking the city’s voters to reject a proposed ordinance that would require signs stating that they don’t perform abortions and directing people to where they can get one outside of pro-life pregnancy centers.

Proposition O, titled the San Francisco Reproductive Freedom Act, is on the city’s general election ballot Tuesday, Nov. 5, which is also the presidential Election Day.

It calls for the San Francisco Department of Health to “install the signage in the public right of way, at or near the entrance” of a pregnancy center in order “to inform the public that those facilities do not provide or offer referrals for abortions or emergency contraception, and to provide information about where those services may be available.”

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone told the Register the proposed ordinance unfairly targets pro-life centers and invites physical attacks against them. He noted that the measure does not require comparable signs outside of facilities that provide abortions.

He also said pro-life pregnancy centers are vital.

“They provide women with a life-giving alternative, and they give her the support that she needs,” Archbishop Cordileone told the Register.

“For a woman to exercise real choice, if that's what they want, real choice means they need, first of all, information, meaning information about what’s going on inside of her body with fetal development and then information on what the other choices are,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “Whether she will give birth to the baby and raise the baby herself, she wants to put the baby up for adoption. I wouldn’t exclude that in some cases marriage might be the old-fashioned alternative.”

Supporters of the measure include the city’s mayor, London Breed, a Democrat who is running in the November election for what would be a second full term.

“We have two of those crisis-pregnancy centers in our city that have been very misleading to women,” Breed said June 18 during a press conference at a Planned Parenthood facility in San Francisco. “And it’s very unfortunate when you are going to understand what all your options are, you’re being told that, you know, like, you will go to hell if you get an abortion. And we don’t need people, you know, telling someone at a very vulnerable moment. We don’t know what they’re going through and what it could lead to.”

She added: “But the fact that these kinds of centers can exist and people are not aware of what they are when they’re walking into the doors is another reason why we need to ensure that signage is appropriate. We need to ensure that we are using every resource that San Francisco has to protect reproductive freedom in any shape or form. And so that’s what this ballot measure represents.”

The pro-life centers in San Francisco are Alpha Pregnancy Center, which describes itself as “a faith-based” “licensed medical facility” that provides pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and parenting assistance; and Bella Primary Care, which describes itself as a “life-affirming” clinic that offers gynecology, postpartum care and pediatrics.

Archbishop Cordileone told the Register that the mayor’s claims about the pro-life centers are nonsense.

“Obviously, they don’t tell women they’re going to hell,” Archbishop Cordileone told the Register on Thursday.

“That they’re misleading women, show me the data on that. I know anecdotally that abortion facilities mislead women. They tell them that it’s just a lump of cells,” he said. “I’ve talked to women who had second thoughts. They went in the facility and then they were starting to change their mind and they were experiencing pressure to go through with the abortion, which they did, and now they’re scarred for life.”

Pregnancy centers, also known as pregnancy-resource centers, provide goods and services to women with problem pregnancies to try to help them and to persuade them not to have an abortion. They offer products such as diapers and formula and services such as pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and counseling, usually free of charge.

Supporters of such centers say they provide vital services to women in need both before and after they give birth.

The archbishop made a video urging San Franciscans to vote “No” on the measure.

“Why would anyone want to stigmatize a primary health-care facility and a pregnancy-resource center that give pregnant women support for having their babies?” Archbishop Cordileone says in the video.

Opponents of the pro-life centers call them “fake clinics” and claim they trick pregnant women into entering them so the staff members can give them a pro-life pitch instead of the abortion that abortion supporters say such women want.

In addition to targeting pregnancy centers, the proposed ballot measure calls for the city to “identify and allocate funding that supports abortions and emergency contraception.” It also would allow abortion facilities as a matter of right in all zoning districts of the city except residential areas.

Supporters of the measure describe it as empowering.

Catherine Stefani, a member of the city’s elected Board of Supervisors, called state laws banning abortion enacted since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022 “terrifying to me” and described San Francisco as “a beacon of hope” when it comes to abortion.

“You can’t sit in that fear. And it’s so important for me. When I am in this much fear, I say to myself: ‘Please remove this fear and direct my attention to what you would have me do,’” Stefani said during the June 18 press conference. “And what we are doing today, we are getting into action. And the fact that we are in action in a way that is so powerful — to let the world know, to let the entirety of our country know that San Francisco will not stand for this — means so much to me, because my fear then is alleviated when I know we are in action.”

Local ordinances are usually enacted by an elected city council or its near equivalent, which in San Francisco is called the Board of Supervisors and presides over the consolidated city-county government.

But bringing the measure to the citywide ballot is part of a larger strategy to provide support for abortion.

“We could pass this at the Board of Supervisors, but by putting it on the ballot, we are telling every San Franciscan, ‘You can do something meaningful, in your own city, to fight back,’” said Hillary Ronen, a member of the Board of Supervisors during the June 18 press conference. “You can be part of making history, and laying down the law, and saying this is who and what we stand for. And we’re not going to do this for you as elected officials. We’re going to bring you into this process, and we’re going to all join and fight together.”

But Archbishop Cordileone said pregnancy centers actually empower women because they give women more and better options than abortion.

“They’re not only [for] babies — they’re woman-centered, to the point that after she gives birth, they continue to give her support. We don’t see that in Planned Parenthood or these other abortion facilities. But the pro-life clinics continue to give her the support that she needs, with help for the baby if she needs diapers, blankets, formula, et cetera,” he said. “So they continue caring for the woman and mothering the child.”

“And not so much at the clinics, but these faith communities that run the clinics, especially our own Catholic faith community, also provide healing experiences for women who are grieving an abortion,” he said.

“This is not something that those who provide abortion do. Right? If anything, the woman is shamed into silence because she’s not supposed to feel guilty about it,” he said. “So she has nowhere to turn, no one to talk to about it. She needs to confide in someone who’s going to listen to her honestly and openly and compassionately. So who are the ones who really care about women in this whole scenario?”