
While the future of unborn children is looking brighter under the new presidential administration, California’s new two-year legislative session got a jump start on bad bills.
In November, after President Trump’s reelection, Governor Newsom called a special session of the legislature to allocate funds for legal battles with the federal government. Newsom claimed the session was necessary to defend “our State’s values and our people’s constitutional rights.”
During the special session on December 2, the legislature introduced four new abortion bills:
Assembly Bill 40 would redefine “emergency services and care,” in a section of the Health and Safety code, to include abortions. This would force hospitals, which are required to provide emergency treatment as needed, to provide abortions on demand.
Assembly Bill 45 would prohibit abortion businesses from releasing medical research information in response to subpoenas from pro-life states. (This bill isn’t well fleshed out yet and states that it is the “intent” of the legislature to write a bill concerning this.)
Assembly Bill 54 would affirm what the legislature believes about chemical abortion and “ensure access” to it. (This bill is also in early draft form and not detailed about how its intent will be carried out.)
Assembly Bill 67 would authorize the California Attorney General to conduct investigations and sue for $25,000 if it “appears to the Attorney General that a person has engaged, or is about to engage, in any act or practice constituting a violation of the Reproductive Privacy Act.” The Reproductive Privacy Act is a current California law that states that every person who may become pregnant has a right to have an abortion.
At the end of the last legislative session, in September, Governor Newsom signed three other bills into law:
Assembly Bill 2085 expedites the permit process for building new Planned Parenthoods and prevents municipal authorities from regulating or restricting the new clinics.
Assembly Bill 2099 turns certain misdemeanor crimes against abortion workers into felonies.
Senate Bill 729 requires insurers to cover in vitro fertilization for same sex couples and single people.
It’s not all bad news, however. Several of last year’s abortion bills either failed to pass out of committee or, if they would have to be directly funded by the state, were vetoed by Governor Newsom:
Assembly Bill 602, which would have encouraged lawsuits against pregnancy care centers and clinics for supposedly “false or misleading” statements, failed in committee.
Assembly Bill 793, which would have hindered law enforcement attempting to collect digital evidence of illegal abortions, failed in committee.
Assembly Bill 2490, which would have established a grant program to fund abortion training for hospital staff, was vetoed by Governor Newsom.
Assembly Bill 2670, which would have required the department of health to run a public awareness campaign to direct women to the California government’s abortion website, was vetoed by Governor Newsom.
Assembly Bill 3022, which would have amended the murder statute to create exceptions for doctors, mothers, and those assisting mothers in killing their unborn children, never got as far as a committee.
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