It’s now been two and a half years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and opened the door for states to implement bans.

The policies and their impact have been in flux ever since the ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Here’s a look at data on where things stand:

Abortions are slightly more common now than before Dobbs

Overturning Roe and enforcing abortion bans has changed how woman obtain abortions in the U.S.

But one thing it hasn’t done is put a dent in the number of abortions being obtained.

There have been slightly more abortions each month across the country recently than there were in the months leading up to the June 2022 ruling, even as the number in states with bans dropped to near zero.

“Abortion bans don’t actually prevent abortions from happening,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at UC San Francisco.

But, she said, they do change care.

For women in some states, there are major obstacles to getting abortions — and advocates say that low-income, minority and immigrant women are least likely to be able to get them when they want.

For those living in states with bans, the ways to access abortion are through travel or abortion pills.

Pills become a bigger part of equation — and the legal questions

As the bans swept in, abortion pills became a bigger part of the equation.

They were involved in about half the abortions before Dobbs. More recently, it’s been closer to two-thirds of them, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute.

The uptick of that kind of abortion, usually involving a combination of two drugs, was underway before the ruling.

But now, it’s become more common for pill prescriptions to be made by telehealth. By the summer of 2024, about 1 in 10 abortions was via pills prescribed via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned.

As a result, the pills are now at the center of battles over abortion access.

This month, Texas sued a New York doctor for prescribing pills to a Texas woman via telemedicine. There’s also an effort by Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to roll back their federal approvals and treat them as “controlled dangerous substances,” and a push for the federal government to start enforcing a 19th century federal law to ban mailing them.

Travel for abortion has increased

Clinics have closed or halted abortions in states with bans.

But a network of efforts to get women seeking abortions to places where they’re legal has strengthened and travel for abortion is now common.

The Guttmacher Institute found that more than twice as many Texas residents obtained abortion in 2023 in New Mexico as New Mexico residents did. And as many Texans received them in Kansas as Kansans.

Abortion funds, which benefited from “rage giving” in 2022, have helped pay the costs for many abortion-seekers. But some funds have had to cap how much they can give.

The abortion map has been in flux

Since the downfall of Roe, the actions of lawmakers and courts have kept shifting where abortion is legal and under what conditions.

Florida, the nation’s second most-populous state, began enforcing a ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy on May 1.

That immediately changed the state from one that was a refuge for other Southerners seeking abortion to an exporter of people looking for them.

There were about 30% fewer abortions there in May compared with the average for the first three months of the year. And in June, there were 35% fewer.

While the ban is not unique, the impact is especially large. The average driving time from Florida to a facility in North Carolina where abortion is available for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is more than nine hours, according to data maintained by Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economics professor.

The bans have meant clinics closed or stopped offering abortions in some states.

But some states where abortion remains legal until viability — generally considered to be sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy, though there’s no fixed time for it — have seen clinics open and expand.

Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico are among the states with new clinics.

There were 799 publicly identifiable abortion providers in the U.S. in May 2022, the month before the Supreme Court reversed Roe vs. Wade. And by this November, it was 792, according to a tally by Myers, who is collecting data on abortion providers.

But Myers says some hospitals that always provided some abortions have begun advertising it. So they’re now in the count of clinics — even though they might provide few of them.

Lack of access to abortions during emergencies is threatening some patients’ lives

How hospitals handle pregnancy complications, especially those that threaten the lives of the women, has emerged as a major issue since Roe was overturned.

President Biden’s administration says hospitals must offer abortions when they’re needed to prevent organ loss, hemorrhage or deadly infections, even in states with bans. Texas is challenging the administration’s policy and the U.S. Supreme Court this year declined to take it up after the Biden administration sued Idaho.

More than 100 pregnant women seeking help in emergency rooms were turned away or left unstable since 2022, the Associated Press found in an analysis of federal hospital investigative records.

Among the complaints were a woman who miscarried in the lobby restroom of Texas emergency room after staff refused to see her and a woman who gave birth in a car after a North Carolina hospital couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

“It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official told the AP earlier this year.

Abortion rights are popular with voters

Since Roe was overturned, there have been 18 reproductive rights-related statewide ballot questions.

Abortion rights advocates have prevailed on 14 of them and lost on four.

In the 2024 election, they amended the constitutions in five states to add the right to abortion. Such measures failed in three states: In Florida, where it required 60% support; in Nebraska, which had competing abortion ballot measures; and in South Dakota, where most national abortion rights groups did support the measure.

AP VoteCast data found that more than three-fifths of voters in 2024 supported abortion being legal in all or most cases — a slight uptick from 2020. The support came even as voters supported Republicans to control the White House and both houses of Congress.

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The Democratic governor, a fierce critic of President-elect Donald Trump, is positioning California to once again be the center of a resistance effort against the conservative agenda. He is asking his Democratic allies in the Legislature, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, to approve additional funding to the attorney general’s office to prepare for a robust legal fight against anticipated federal challenges.

Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel on Monday introduced legislation to set aside $25 million for legal fees to respond to potential attacks by the Trump administration on state policies regarding civil rights, climate change, immigration and abortion access.

“While we always hope to collaborate with our federal partners, California will be ready to vigorously defend our interests and values from any unlawful action by the incoming Trump Administration,” Gabriel said in a statement.

California sued the first Trump administration more than 120 times to various levels of success.

“We’re not going to be caught flat-footed,” Newsom said at a recent news conference.

Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. Democrats, which hold every statewide office in California and have commanding margins in the Legislature and congressional delegation, outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide.

Trump called the Democratic governor “Newscum” during a campaign stop in Southern California and has relentlessly lambasted the Democratic stronghold over its large number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, homeless population and thicket of regulations.

Trump also waded into a water rights battle over the endangered delta smelt, a tiny fish that has pitted environmentalists against farmers and threatened to withhold federal aid to a state increasingly under threat from wildfires. He also vowed to follow through with his campaign promise of carrying out the mass deportation of immigrants without legal status and prosecuting his political enemies.

Before the special session began, state lawmakers swore in more than two dozen new members and elect leaders for the 2025 legislative session. Lawmakers voted to convene the special session largely along party lines.

“This special session is about sticking up for Californians and for California values,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat representing San Francisco. “It is about ensuring that the president of the United States and his administration actually follow the law.”

Hundreds of people also demonstrated around the Capitol on Monday to urge the Legislature to try to stop Trump’s mass deportation plans. They carried banners that said “Not one cent for mass deportation” and “MAGA out of California.”

“With the results of the presidential election, we need our state elected officials to use every tool and every resource they have available to them to protect our immigrant Californians,” protester Deborah Lee said.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office will protect the state’s immigration population, while Newsom last week unveiled a proposal to revive a rebate program for electric vehicle purchases if the incoming Trump administration eliminates a federal tax credit for people who buy electric cars. Newsom is also considering creating a backup disaster relief fund for the wildfire-prone state after Trump’s threats.

Bonta announced legislation Monday aimed at bolstering reproductive rights in the state, including by allowing the attorney general to seek monetary penalties against local governments that infringe on those rights. The proposals are part of the state’s efforts to safeguard against threats to abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Republican lawmakers blasted Newsom and his Democratic allies over the special session. State Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Republican representing Murrieta in Southern California, said the special session proposal would make California have a more adversarial relationship with the federal government.

“What we’re doing today is sending that exact message — that we are going to fight tooth and nail for everything. And you know what? That means they’re going to fight us tooth and nail for everything,” Seyarto said of the incoming Trump administration if the legislation gets approved.

Legislators also are expected to spend the year discussing ways to protect dozens of laws expected to be targeted by the Trump administration, including one that has made the state a sanctuary for people seeking abortions who live in states where such practices have been severely limited.

California, the nation’s most populous state, was the first to mandate that by 2035 all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs sold in California be electric, hydrogen-powered or plug-in hybrids. The state also extends state-funded health care to all low-income residents regardless of their immigration status.

Newsom hasn’t provided details about what actions the lawmakers will consider but said he wanted funding in place before Trump’s inauguration day, Jan. 20. The state spent roughly $42 million in litigation costs during the first Trump administration, officials said.

California is projected to face a $2 billion budget deficit next year, with bigger shortfalls ahead. Gabriel, who sued the first Trump administration in 2017 when it tried to end a program to shield young immigrants from being deported, said lining up the funding now is “a wise investment.”

California successfully clawed back $57 million between 2017 and 2018 after prevailing in a lawsuit to block the Trump administration from putting immigration enforcement conditions on certain federal law enforcement grants. Another legal victory over the citizenship question in the 2020 census forced the federal government to return $850,000 to the state, according to the attorney general’s office.

During Trump’s first presidency, Democratic attorneys general banded together to file lawsuits over immigration, Trump’s travel ban for residents of Muslim countries, the environment, immigration and other topics. But Trump has one possible advantage this time around: He was aggressive in nominating conservative jurists to federal courts at all levels, including the Supreme Court.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Anti-abortion advocates say there is still work to be done to further restrict access to abortion when Republican Donald Trump returns to the White House next year.

They point to the federal guidance that the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden released around emergency abortions, requiring that hospitals provide them for women whose health or life is at risk, and its easing of prescribing restrictions for abortion pills that have allowed women to order the medication online with the click of a button.

“Now the work begins to dismantle the pro-abortion policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” the Susan B. Anthony List, the powerful anti-abortion lobby, said in a statement Wednesday. “President Trump’s first-term pro-life accomplishments are the baseline for his second term.”

The group declined to release details about what, specifically, they will seek to undo. But abortion rights advocates are bracing for further abortion restrictions once Trump takes office. And some women are, too, with online abortion pill orders spiking in the days after Election Day.

Trump has said abortion is an issue for the states, not the federal government. Yet, during the campaign, he pointedly noted that he appointed justices to the Supreme Court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion. And there are things his administration can do, from picking judges to issuing regulations, to further an anti-abortion agenda.

Trump unlikely to require emergency abortions from hospitals

The Trump administration is expected to pull back Biden’s controversial directive that requires emergency rooms to provide abortions when necessary to stabilize a woman’s health or life. The Biden administration had argued that the decades-old federal law, which requires hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment for patients in exchange for Medicare funding, also applies in cases where an abortion might be needed.

Reports of women being sent home or left untreated by hospitals in dangerous scenarios have proliferated across the United States since the Supreme Court overturned the national right to an abortion in 2022. In some cases, hospitals said state abortion bans had stopped them from terminating a pregnancy.

“We’re seeing the lives of pregnant people be put in jeopardy,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said Wednesday. “We’re seeing women who have become infertile, who have been subject to sepsis and we’re now hearing reports with death.”

Even if a Trump administration abandons the guidance of the law, Goss Graves said advocacy groups like hers will continue a legal fight for the Biden administration’s interpretation of the law.

Some doctors and hospitals also have said the federal guidance offered a protection for them to perform emergency abortions in states like Idaho and Texas, where threat of prosecution for performing an abortion hangs over their decision-making.

Trump has said he supports exceptions for rape and incest cases, as well as when a woman’s life is at risk. But he has not gone as far as saying he supports exemptions when a woman’s health is on the line.

Abortions might be necessary to prevent organ loss, significant hemorrhage or dangerous infections for pregnant women in rare but serious scenarios. In cases like ectopic pregnancy, premature rupture of membranes and placental abruptions, a fetus might still be alive but continuing the pregnancy can be detrimental. Doctors have argued that the legal gray area has put them in a bind.

In Idaho, for example, one hospital resorted to airlifting women out of the state after a strict abortion ban, which only allowed for abortions to prevent a woman’s death, was enacted.

The Biden administration sued Idaho, arguing its state law conflicted with federal law requiring hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment, which might include abortions, for patients. The state amended its law to allow abortions for ectopic pregnancies, but other dangerous scenarios still remain unaccounted for. The Supreme Court declined to address the issue earlier this year, issuing a limited order that cleared the way for hospitals to provide emergency abortions while the case worked its way through lower courts.

Enforcement of the federal law, however, is on hold in Texas, which challenged the Biden administration’s guidance on emergency abortions.

A patchwork of state laws governing abortion will remain in place under the Trump administration. Voters in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota on Tuesday defeated constitutional amendments, leaving bans in place.

In Missouri, however, voters approved a ballot measure on Tuesday to undo one of the nation’s strictest bans. Abortion rights amendments also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Nevada voters also approved an amendment, but they’ll need to pass it again in 2026 for it to take effect.

Challenges to abortion pill access will continue under Trump

The ease with which women have been able to get abortion pills could also be up for reconsideration under Trump.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration made it easier to obtain abortion pills, including mifepristone, allowing women to access the medication over telehealth. The agency has approved the drug’s safety through 10 weeks of pregnancy, saying that adverse effects happen for .32% of patients.

Anti-abortion advocates have challenged that, arguing the medications are not safe and at the very least not fit for eased access without in-person supervision by a doctor.

Although the Supreme Court preserved access to the drug earlier this year, anti-abortion advocates and conservative states have renewed their challenge in lower courts.

Some women are worried. Telehealth company Wisp saw an immediate spike in abortion pill orders between Election Day and the following day, with a 600% increase. In states like Florida and Texas, where the medication cannot be legally shipped, the company saw a nearly 1000% percent increase in orders of so-called “morning after” pills, also known as emergency contraception.

The company fills about tens of thousands of orders monthly for reproductive products including birth control pills and abortion pills, CEO Monica Cepak told the Associated Press.

Right now women typically take a two-step regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol to complete a medication abortion. Cepak said the company will keep a “close eye” on mifepristone under a Trump administration and is prepared to shift to a misoprostol-only regimen should restriction to mifepristone be implemented.

But Trump could be a wild card on the issue, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis who is an expert on reproductive health issues. In the final months of the campaign, he backed away from a more rigid stance on abortion — even saying he would not sign a national abortion ban if it came across his desk.

Although he has enjoyed firm backing from anti-abortion groups, he is willing to break with allies when he wants.

“I don’t think we have a clear sense from him about what he would do,” Ziegler said.

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California’s law is meant to give Arizonans an option to receive legal abortions from their doctor over the next several months when nearly all abortions in the state will be temporarily banned.

There’s a law in Arizona — first passed in 1864, but not enforced for decades — that bans nearly all abortions in the state. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that law would take effect in June now that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states set their own abortion laws.

The state Legislature quickly voted to repeal that law, and Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs promptly signed it. But the repeal won’t take effect until September at the earliest, leaving an approximately three-month window when most abortions would be banned in the state.

California’s new law, which takes effect immediately, allows licensed doctors in Arizona to come to California and perform abortions for their patients through the end of November. Licensed Arizona doctors would still have to fill out an application to perform abortions in California. But if the doctors meet certain requirements, the law directs California regulators to approve their application within five business days.

“California stands ready to protect reproductive freedom,” Newsom said.

Since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, more than 20 states began enforcing abortion bans of varying degrees.

California has done the opposite, with Newsom vowing to make the state a “ sanctuary ” for people in other states seeking abortions. California has passed dozens of laws to protect abortion access, including setting aside $20 million in taxpayer money to help pay for patients in other states to travel to California to get an abortion.

The law Newsom signed on Thursday does not include new money to help Arizona patients travel to California for abortions. But Newsom partnered with the advocacy group Red Wine and Blue to raise money from private donors to help Arizona patients travel to California.

The group, headquartered in Ohio and launched by the Arizona Freedom Trust, seeks to organize suburban women. It had raised just over $111,000 toward its nearly $500,000 goal, according to its website.

Newsom and his Democratic allies in the state Legislature worked quickly to get this law passed. But some Republicans questioned the need for it. Last year, Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed an executive order barring local prosecutors from bringing abortion-related charges.

Still, Democrats in the California Legislature felt the law was necessary. State Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley and the bill’s author, said a law was stronger than an executive order from a governor.

“Once again California has made it crystal clear for all who need or deliver essential reproductive care: We’ve got your back,” Skinner said.

The law says Arizona doctors would have to tell California regulators where they planned to perform abortions in the state. But the law bars California regulators from publishing any information on their website about Arizona doctors aside from the doctor’s name, status and license number.

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TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — It’s Sunday night and Crystal P. Lira is not answering her messages. Inside the headquarters of Colectiva Bloodys y Projects, an organization that has supported reproductive rights near the U.S.-Mexico border since 2016, her only concern is for the woman she has provided with a safe space to get an abortion.

Lira, who lives in Tijuana, in northern Mexico, is one among dozens of Mexican “acompañantes” — volunteers who support women wanting to terminate a pregnancy. Located all over the country, most acompañantes offer virtual guidance through an abortion protocol in which no clinics or prescriptions are needed.

Developed by activists after decades of facing abortion bans and restrictions in most of Mexico’s 32 states, the protocol encourages women to trust self-managed medication abortions following guidelines established by the World Health Organization.

“Accompaniment means that we facilitate information, medications and everything a woman needs to get a safe abortion at home,” Lira said. “But we also provide emotional support and support to fight stigma, religious and cultural barriers.”

Mexico’s Supreme Court recently ruled that national laws prohibiting abortions are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights. The ruling, which extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access, happened a year after the court’s U.S. counterpart went in the opposite direction.

The Mexican decision did not have the same immediate impact as Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing women’s access to abortion on a nationwide basis.

Although the Mexican ruling orders the removal of abortion from the federal penal code and requires federal health institutions to offer the procedure to anyone who requests it, further state-by-state legal work will be needed to remove all penalties.

“The court did not give a direct instruction to any local congress, but it sends a very clear signal of what congresses have to do,” said Sofia Aguiar, a lawyer at the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE.

For now, 20 Mexican states still criminalize abortion.

In Baja California, where Tijuana is located, abortion was decriminalized in 2021. By then, Lira had already gained five years’ experience as an acompañante.

“Ahead of starting an abortion network, I questioned myself: How did I get to this point? Why did I live what I lived, and what could have been different?” she said.

In 2012, Lira faced an unwanted pregnancy. “I didn’t know what to do, where to look for help,” she said.

On the recommendation of a friend, and due to her hometown’s proximity to the U.S. border, Lira made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood clinic in San Diego. She traveled back home with pills and a debt of $600 that she paid for her abortion.

Three years later, deeply conflicted by the inequality in abortion access, she became an activist and received training to become an acompañante.

“The easiest part was learning the abortion protocol,” she said. “The toughest was acquiring a political perspective, understanding how abortions are based on rights and freedom.”

Many reject her views in Mexico, a predominantly Catholic country.

Soon after the court’s ruling in early September, former actor and right-wing activist Eduardo Verástegui announced he will seek the presidency on an anti-abortion platform. “Say ‘yes’ to life and ‘no’ to abortion,” he has said, echoed by his followers.

Without mentioning him by name, the Catholic archbishop of Mexico City, Carlos Aguiar Retes, recently advocated voting for Verástegui in the 2024 election, and some Catholic, evangelical and anti-abortion groups have publicly supported him as well.

“We think it’s good to have a character like him,” said Rodrigo Iván Cortés, director of the National Family Front, an anti-abortion group. “He’s explicit about defending life and family.”

Abortion activists were not surprised by the conservative response to the court’s ruling.

“Historically, every progressive movement is followed by a setback from groups that organize against it,” said Aguiar from GIRE. “We saw it in the United States.”

Aguiar and her colleagues plan to keep advocating for reproductive rights. “We will continue working on issues like obstetric violence, maternal death and forced contraception,” Aguiar said.

At Colectiva Bloodys y Projects, Lira has plans of her own.

With a colleague who recently moved to San Diego, they hope to replicate some of their abortion strategies in California. “We want to migrate our perspectives,” Lira said. “To lead informative brigades and communicate that we can provide pills for those who can’t access abortion medication there.”

It’s no coincidence that Lira’s views are influenced by migration. The surge of migrants approaching the U.S. border, traveling from Colombia through the Darién jungle and moving up through Central America into Mexico, could approach 500,000 this year.

Venezuelans, Salvadorans, Haitians and Mexicans — internally displaced by violence — are among those who migrate by trains, buses and on foot. Along the way, thousands are victims of robbery, human trafficking and sexual abuse.

“We’ve been seeing women who suffer a lot of violence on their way to the United States,” Lira said.

Some migrants who wish to terminate their pregnancies contact them directly and others are channeled through shelters or midwives. “We have realized the need to support these women. … They experience violence, especially sexual, and need abortions,” said Minerva, another member of Colectiva Bloodys y Projects. For security reasons, she spoke on condition she be identified only by her first name.

Access to medication and a private space to get a self-managed abortion are particularly difficult for migrants, who can spend several months in shelters on the border.

“We want to accompany them,” Lira said. “But abortion access is just the tip of the iceberg. We expect to share key information for their physical and mental health.”

Joining forces with a local organization focused on reproductive health, Lira and activist Monica Rosas will offer an informative workshop on fertility and the reproductive cycle by mid-October at a church-affiliated shelter where up to 1,700 migrants are currently waiting to enter the U.S.

“We will create a space for self-knowledge as a tribe,” Rosas said.

The program includes body literacy — naming parts of the anatomy free of taboos — and dances to celebrate the female body.

“We would love for these women who are passing through, waiting for an opportunity to cross, to carry this information with them,” Lira said. “Our bodies are powerful and, if we know them, that can help us reach our own identity.”

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The right to an abortion is currently protected in California in two ways. In 2002, the Legislature passed the Reproductive Privacy Act, which made the right to obtain an abortion the official law of the state.

The other layer of protection is the privacy provision of the California Constitution, which was enshrined in 1972 and has been used by the California Supreme Court to strike down numerous attempts at abortion restrictions in the state ever since. Should voters pass Proposition 1 in November, it would add an even more formidable layer of protection, by enshrining these existing abortion rights into the state Constitution.

Why do we need to shore up protections Californians already have? Because the demise of Roe v. Wade at the hands of the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case this summer made clear that nothing is truly guaranteed, even in a progressive state like ours. Just as one California Legislature made a policy to protect the right to abortion, another could repeal it. Furthermore, the overturning of Roe showed the obvious danger in relying on court precedent to protect abortion rights.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case essentially said that previous courts were wrong when they ruled and maintained that the right to abortion is a fundamental liberty protected under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. So what’s to stop a future California Supreme Court from doing something similar at the state level — turning its back on previous court precedents, and deciding that the privacy provision doesn’t actually protect abortion and contraception? Nothing.

This is exactly why California needs to pass Prop. 1. By explicitly adding protections for abortion and contraception to our state Constitution, the right to abortion will still be secure even if a future Legislature were to repeal the Reproductive Privacy Act or a future California Supreme Court decides the privacy provision no longer applies to reproductive rights. Some Californians may worry that Prop. 1 is an overreach, or that it will affect our current laws.

We believe this is fundamentally wrong. Prop 1 does not alter or displace the Reproductive Privacy Act, nor does it change any element of California’s existing reproductive laws. Instead, it explicitly bolsters these protections under current law. It states in no uncertain terms that nothing in the proposed amendment “narrows or limits the right to privacy or equal protection.” Rather, by spelling out that the state cannot “deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom…which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives,” Prop 1 identifies and secures the right to abortion and contraception as fundamental rights in our state.

Some opponents of the amendment, including the Republican Party of California and the California Catholic Conference, argue that the amendment’s language is too broad and will therefore allow the legalization of all abortions later in pregnancy, overriding current laws that restrict abortions to pre-fetal viability unless a pregnant person’s life is at risk.

That is not true. The three-sentence amendment is broad by design, much like the privacy provision that is currently used as the basis for abortion protection, because constitutional provisions are supposed to be skeletal outlines that the legislature can then use as the basis for drafting legislation. The privacy provision did not prevent the Legislature from adding some restrictions to abortions. Prop 1 won’t have that effect either.

It’s true that the threat to abortion and contraception in California seems low right now. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature have made clear their intention to make California an abortion sanctuary, as restrictions to reproductive care have ramped up in more than a dozen states across the country since the Dobbs decision. The majority of Californians support the right to an abortion in most, if not all, cases. Recent polling indicates that 69% of likely voters in California support Prop 1.

But likely votes don’t mean much until they’re cast. The rights to abortion and contraception are too important to be left beholden to any particular governor, Legislature or court. Prop 1 ensures that they are not.

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