California Prepares to Strengthen State Abortion Access: ‘Fight for What’s Right’

As Donald Trump returns to the White House, anti-abortion groups are hoping this is their moment.

With Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled by a conservative supermajority, activists are pushing an extreme agenda, including a nationwide abortion ban, a ban on abortion pills, a “fetal personhood” doctrine that would ban in vitro fertilization and could restrict in vitro fertilization. attacks on contraception.

Rights groups are looking to states to protect reproductive care, perhaps none more so than California, the most populous and one of the bluest in the US.

California lawmakers are already preparing. Mia Bonta, a Democratic Assembly member and chair of the state Assembly health committee, said she will introduce a package of bills next month that aims to expand access to birth control pills, protect emergency abortion care in hospitals and improve the health of mothers in the state.

“If the federal government and the president are going to use the motto ‘your body, my choice,’ I think it is very important that we in the state of California make clear what our principle is,” Bonta said in an interview on Tuesday. “California will remain a haven to push for the recognition of women’s autonomy and our bodily autonomy and to prioritize access to comprehensive reproductive care through our health care policies.”

Bonta will introduce her bills on Dec. 2, the start of the Legislature’s emergency “Trump-proofing” session called by the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

As of 2022, abortion rights have been enshrined in California’s constitution, and the state has established itself in recent years as a haven for women from other states seeking the procedure. Bonta’s proposals seek to further that trend, she said. Since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion in its 2022 Dobbs decision, states have been free to enact policies banning or restricting the procedure. Californians passed a measure in 2022 enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.

A first bill is intended to guarantee access to emergency reproductive health care. It’s a response to a law passed in Idaho last year that stipulated abortions in the state would only be allowed if the patient’s life was in danger. Advocates fear that under Trump, Idaho’s interpretation could be expanded nationwide, jeopardizing emergency abortion care.

“We wanted to make sure that in California you don’t have to go through heartbreak and a health emergency … should you need access to abortion in emergency rooms,” Bonta said.

Her second bill aims to expand access to over-the-counter contraception for recipients of Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.

Her third bill aims to streamline the licensing process for alternative birth centers The number of labor and delivery units in some parts of the state has decreased in recent years. In some regions, Bonta said, pregnant women would have to travel as much as two hours to get care: “I’m just blown away that that’s still the case in the United States today.” Birth centers are linked to better health outcomes for lower-income women, the lawmaker noted, adding that she was looking for ways to make the centers more financially sustainable.

While Trump is on the campaign trail said legislation should be left to the states and he will do so veto a national ban, he has repeatedly discussed the issue. And there are many more ways his administration could unravel rights and access, even in blue states. Project 2025, the right-wing manifesto drafted by his allies, calls on the president to roll back FDA approval of abortion pills, increase CDC “oversight” of pregnancy loss and erode federal funding for family planning programs that provide contraception.

Bonta said it is important to recognize that access to abortion is a right supported by a majority of voters, including many in states that voted for Trump. Missouri, Montana, Arizona and Nevada all supported Trump and passed abortion rights measures this month.

Ensuring Californians’ access to abortion is personal for Bonta. In 2022, she revealed that she had an abortion at the age of 21. “I chose to own my body,” she said at the time. It’s a decision that has helped her break the “cycle of poverty in my family,” she said.

“It was important for me to be very open about my own health journey,” she said this week. “At this moment when women in other parts of the country are having to reconsider participating in a practice that puts their lives at risk, it is important to be a beacon… and fight to ensure that (they ) have the same kind of people. of the care I received. I want to be able to look my daughters in the eye and tell them that I am fighting for their health, their quality of life and that of their children.”

Bonta is married to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is preparing the state’s Justice Department to fight a series of potential Trump administration efforts that would restrict civil rights and hinder other progressive initiatives in the state . The attorney general has said he is prepared to pursue this policy with lawsuits and has draft legal briefs ready, including a national abortion ban.

Trump is expected to push back hard. Bonta said she hoped lawmakers would not be distracted by culture war rhetoric and focus on “good policies that can withstand federal intervention.”

While the courts’ conservative tendencies have made that challenge more difficult, she said, “our job is to fight for what is right and hope that the legal system … will not try to legislate through legal rulings and that there will be a some degree of decency. in the judiciary.”

“It’s hard not to feel like we’re moving toward a dystopian state,” Bonta says. “There are many people who are just as scared as I am right now… As a legislator, I have the privilege of standing in the centers of power in the state of California. I am grateful that I have the ability to fight.”