In a speech to Jim Garlow’s “Future Convention” in San Diego on Tuesday, Troy Newman, head of the anti-choice group Operation Rescue, blamed legal abortion for the years-long drought in California, saying, “There are no coincidences with God.”

Newman referred the audiences to the dozens of doom-and-gloom speeches they were hearing about problems in America and around the world, from gay rights to a supposed impending financial collapse. “I believe that the root cause of all of our problems in this world is our lack of recognizing the sanctity of human life, the baby in the womb,” he said. “When we start taking away the rights of innocent children in the womb, we have no other rights.”

“You see, without life, we have no liberty, we have no marriage, we have no gun rights, we have no property rights, you can’t be taxed if you haven’t been born,” he explained. “So in 1973, when seven of the nine Supreme Court justices declared no right to life to the innocent children in the womb, all other problems sprang from that.”

After Roe v. Wade, he said, the “land was polluted…with innocent blood.”

“Is it no wonder that California is experiencing the worst drought in history when it is the largest child-killer in all of the United States?” he asked. “There are no coincidences with God.”

In a breakout session later in the day, Newman called Roe v. Wade “the fatal flaw of the American experiment.”

“It’s fatal. Is there any wonder that we’ve been on a steep, spiral slope since, going down, down, down?”

UPDATE 1/28/2016: This post has been updated with video of Newman’s remarks. The original audio we posted is here: