California Rolls Out More Abortion Protections Ahead Of Trump’s Return | EUROtoday

In anticipation of extra hostility towards abortion below President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, California lawmakers introduced two new items of laws Monday aimed toward defending treatment abortion and punishing native governments that intervene with entry to reproductive well being care.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta introduced the payments at a press convention, saying Californians are in an “urgent and dangerous situation” with Trump returning to workplace and Republicans quickly controlling each chambers in Congress.

One of the legislative proposals, the Medication Abortion Access invoice, seeks to make sure that treatment abortion ― a two-pill routine of mifepristone and misoprostol ― is protected and accessible in every single place in California, together with in its so-called well being care deserts the place medical suppliers are more durable to return by.

“Rights don’t really do us any good if we can’t access them,” stated Assemblymember-elect Maggy Krell, who co-authored the invoice with Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry. The purpose of the invoice is to make sure that treatment abortion ― the commonest approach of terminating a being pregnant ― is “not just a constitutional right that lives in a constitutional document on paper,” she stated.

The laws “will ensure that patients and providers have access to what they need, to mifepristone, to misoprostol, and protect the transportation, the mailing, the supplying of everything that would be needed for a medication abortion,” Krell continued at Monday’s press convention.

The full textual content of the invoice and its methods haven’t but been launched.

The laws comes as reproductive rights advocates warn that Trump might invoke the the Comstock Act ― a 150-year-old regulation that criminalizes sending “obscene” supplies within the mail, together with something “intended for producing abortion” ― to ban treatment abortion, which has change into an important entry level because the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

After months of strain for him to make clear his stance, Trump stated on the marketing campaign path that he wouldn’t implement the Comstock Act. But critics are skeptical of such a promise provided that lots of his allies, together with Vice President-elect JD Vance, have advocated for utilizing it to crack down on treatment abortion.

The different California laws introduced Monday would broaden Bonta’s powers to implement the Reproductive Privacy Act, an present statute banning the state from interfering in a affected person’s choice to entry abortion. If handed, Bonta would be capable to slap those that violate it with monetary penalties.

“This is not a hypothetical,” Bonta stated Monday, saying metropolis officers in Beverly Hills illegally colluded earlier this 12 months to cease an abortion clinic from opening there.

“We were able to prevent Beverly Hills from taking this type of action again, but we weren’t able to seek financial penalties that would in turn further disincentivize government actors from violating the law,” Bonta stated.

The payments’ announcement comes the identical day California Gov. Gavin Newsom convened a particular session on Trump-proofing among the state’s legal guidelines. He plans to ask the legislature to approve extra funding to Bonta’s workplace in preparation with authorized fights with the Trump administration.

“We’re not going to be caught flat-footed,” Newsom stated at a press convention earlier this month. “We want to be prepared as early as Jan. 20.”

Speaking Monday, Bonta stated it’s California’s obligation to encourage each state to its east.

“At times in this nation, when people’s rights and freedoms are under attack, when they’re at risk ― as is so often the case ― people look west across this country,” he stated. “They look west to California to see what the largest state in the nation, the fifth-largest economy in the world, the most diverse state in the nation, is doing. And here’s what they’ll see.”

He famous that his workplace sued the earlier Trump administration greater than 120 occasions and received a supermajority of these circumstances.