Roe V. Wade Overturned: What It Means In CA

CALIFORNIA —The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1973 decision that allowed women to receive abortions.

The court’s repudiation of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and a subsequent case on fetal liability, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was expected. In May, Justice Samuel Alito Jr.’s majority opinion draft was leaked to Politico, setting the stage for a seismic shift in abortion rights.

California is one of four U.S. states that have affirmed the right to an abortion. After the decision draft leaked, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed on Twitter to “fight like hell” to protect abortion rights. The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling was being described as the most significant curtailing of an established constitutional right in court's history.

Democratic leaders around the state, where 72 percent of residents and 54 percent of Republicans identify as pro-choice, joined in condemning the draft ruling and pledged to turn California into a haven for women seeking legal abortions.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said the decision was a betrayal of the commitments made by recent justices during their confirmation hearings, who said under oath they would uphold decades of legal precedent.

"It is a repudiation of some of our nation's most cherished values, from the right to privacy to the right of everyone to make their own health care decisions," Schiff said in a released statement. "The fact that this opinion does not come as a surprise does not make it any less traumatic for the millions of women now stripped of their access to safe and legal abortion; it does not make it any less frightening for the millions of people now worried about whether their fundamental freedoms will be the next to fall."

Schiff said the Supreme Court's decision did not happen in a vacuum and has been in the works for years.

"After waging an all-out assault against abortion access for decades, after committing shocking acts of constitutional disrespect by withholding the confirmation of a justice nominated by a Democratic president and jamming through a Republican nominee during an election campaign, after conspiring with state legislators across the country to put forth some of the most draconian criminal penalties imaginable, Republicans are now one step closer to their ultimate goal: a nationwide ban on abortion," Schiff said.

"Make no mistake, this court is not conservative — it is partisan, with a partisan and socially backward agenda."

SEE ALSO: Roe V. Wade Overturned: Abortion Rights Left To States To Decide

Shortly after the decision leaked, Newsom and Democrats in the state legislature unveiled a plan to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. Democrats also unveiled a package of 13 bills to ease access to abortion. They include the following.

• A proposal to block other states from imposing civil or criminal penalties on abortion providers in California.
• A proposal to create scholarships for reproductive care doctors.
• A proposal to ban private insurance companies from charging co-pays or deductibles for the procedure.
• A proposal to set aside $40 million in the state budget to help the uninsured gain access to abortion and more.
• A proposal to pay travel and medical costs for out-of-state abortion seekers.

All of the bills have passed the Senate and Assembly but have been amended and re-referred to various committees before final passage.

On Thursday, Newsom signed an urgency bill (effective immediately) to protect anyone in California from civil liability for providing, aiding or receiving abortion care. AB 1666 declared that any legal action brought against the right to reproductive choice is contrary to California civil policy and thus will not be enforced in California courts.

Newsom stood in front of a Planned Parenthood office in Los Angeles in May to announce an additional $57 million to a reproductive health package that now costs $125 million.

This is a far cry from much of the rest of the country.

SEE ALSO: Protestors Gather After Supreme Court Strikes Down Roe V. Wade

At least 26 states are certain or likely to make it nearly impossible for a woman to get a procedure that was legal for her mother, grandmother or even great-grandmother, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research and policy group.

With the decision, abortion would be illegal or a nearly impossible procedure to get in about half of U.S. states, including large swaths of the South, Midwest and Northern Plains.

Abortion is already illegal or soon will be in 13 states with pre-existing “trigger” laws banning abortion set to take effect with the dismantling of Roe and Casey, and another four are poised to ban it, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nine have so-called fetal heartbeat laws that make the procedure illegal before many women know they are pregnant.

Abortion rights were long considered settled law, and even as conservative states pushed at-the-time unconstitutional fetal heartbeat laws and others restricting abortion access to bring the court to this moment, many legal scholars doubted a right that generations of women and men had counted on was in serious jeopardy.

The case that made it to a full hearing before the court, Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, came after then-President Donald Trump appointed three conservative judges — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and, a few months before his term ended, Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced liberal stalwart Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September 2020.

The court heard oral arguments on the Mississippi case in December.

Lawyers for the state of Mississippi had proposed an array of mechanisms to uphold the 15-week abortion ban but said the court ultimately should overturn the "egregiously wrong" Roe and Casey rulings.

If the court "does not impose a substantial obstacle to 'a significant number of women' seeking abortions," the state argued at the time, the justices should reinterpret the "undue burden" standard established in Roe and give the state the authority to "prohibit elective abortions before viability" of the fetus.

RELATED:

• California Leans In As Abortion Regue With ‘Roe’ Under Threat
• CA Gears Up For Wave Of Abortion Seekers: ‘CA Stands With Women’
• Newsom Proposes $40M To Cover Abortions For Uninsured

City News Service contributed to this report.