GOP Candidate Steve Hilton Would Extradite California Abortion Doctor to Louisiana

Steve Hilton, a leading Republican candidate for California governor, said he would allow Louisiana to extradite a Bay Area abortion doctor to face charges if he’s elected, despite state laws prohibiting cooperation and strong public support for reproductive rights.

Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month rejected Louisiana’s request to send Healdsburg physician Dr. Rémy Coeytaux to face charges there. Coeytaux is accused of prescribing and mailing abortion pills to a Louisiana woman in October 2023 and was indicted by the state’s GOP attorney general earlier this month.

In rejecting the request, Newsom cited an executive order he signed in 2022, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. That executive order expressly bars the state from cooperating with extradition requests from other states investigating reproductive health care.

He also pointed to California’s telemedicine abortion shield law, which protects anyone who provides or receives reproductive health care in the state. The law is part of a suite of protections lawmakers passed in response to the Supreme Court’s decision, though it took effect after Coeytaux allegedly mailed the abortion pills.

Speaking on KQED’s Political Breakdown podcast, Hilton said he understands that California voters have enshrined the right to abortion in the state constitution, but said he would still “enforce the law” — referring to Louisiana’s law.

“Louisiana voted one way. California voted a different way. That’s the beauty of our federalist system, and I think that’s exactly right,” Hilton said. “But you can’t have one state imposing its will on another.”

Hilton said he’s always supported the “decentralization of power” and believes decisions should be made as close as possible to the people. He argued that’s what the Supreme Court did when it overturned Roe v. Wade, handing decisions over abortion access to the states.

In this case, Hilton said by not honoring the extradition request, California is trying to impose its will on Louisiana.

“Louisiana is trying to uphold what its people voted for, and California is undermining it,” he said. “And I don’t think that’s right. Just as I wouldn’t want to see Louisiana coming in and undermining something that we voted for here in California.”

Louisiana has also tried to extradite a doctor from New York, a request that Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has also refused.

Reproductive rights advocates slammed Hilton’s position. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California CEO and President Jodi Hicks accused Hilton of “brazenly” rejecting California’s “values and leadership as a reproductive freedom state.”

“Any governor or future governor’s job is to protect the values and principles here in California — and certainly ones that Californians have voted on,” Hicks said, noting that Proposition 1, which enshrined abortion access in the state constitution, passed with 67% support. “Their job is to protect those principles and anyone in California, including our California providers.”

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of the national group Reproductive Freedom for All, called Louisiana’s extradition attempts “outrageous and dangerous,” saying in a written statement that by leaving abortion to the states, President Donald Trump has given “anti-abortion extremists free rein to criminalize providers, terrorize patients, and reach beyond state lines to block care.”

“This is not a moment for capitulation,” she said. “The next governor of California must be an unequivocal champion for reproductive freedom, willing to push back against the extremists working to undermine our fundamental rights.”

UC Davis law professor Mary Ziegler, an expert on reproductive rights and laws, said California’s shield law may not technically prevent a governor from agreeing to an extradition order, but it would effectively prevent the extradition from happening.

That’s because the law prohibits state and local government employees and contractors from participating in an extradition relating to abortion care, meaning a judge would not legally be able to issue an arrest warrant, and police could not take someone into custody.

“It’s true that there’s an executive order that Newsom introduced that could be rescinded,” by a future governor, Ziegler said. “But then there’s just the statute, which the governor on his own couldn’t rescind … There are a lot of limits on what other actors can do in terms of arrest and extradition.”

A governor, she said, “isn’t going to roll up and arrest people and extradite them.”

Ziegler said Newsom likely cited the executive order in Coeytaux’s case because the alleged shipment of medication to Louisiana occurred in October 2023, months before California’s shield law took effect.

More broadly, she said, the situation illustrates how complicated the legal landscape has become since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

“It’s a zero-sum game,” Ziegler said. “One state is imposing its will on the other. It’s just a question of which one.”

“That’s why the whole leaving it to the states thing wasn’t going to work, because the states were going to take diametrically opposed positions,” she said.

Hilton’s remarks come as the race to succeed Newsom remains wide open. Despite Democrats outnumbering Republicans nearly two-to-one in the state — and the fact that no Republican has won statewide office in California in 20 years — Hilton has led some recent polls, along with another GOP candidate, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

The Democratic field is large, and support among those candidates remains fractured, leading to some consternation among Democrats that the two GOP candidates could make it into a November runoff; California’s election system allows the top two vote-getters to advance, regardless of party.

But surveys also show a wide swath of the electorate is still undecided.

Hilton has largely avoided talking about abortion on the campaign trail. But in an interview last summer with Orange County evangelical pastor Jack Hibbs, he talked about moving the state “towards life.” He called abortion an “awful, awful outcome” and said he would encourage adoption.

Hibbs, the founder and senior pastor at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, endorsed Hilton last week, sharing an audio clip where Hilton also said he would end the use of taxpayer funds to promote what he called “abortion tourism” if elected governor.