California is Gearing Up to Protect the Right to an Abortion

While it’s horrifying that the Supreme Court seems likely to either completely overturn Roe v. Wade or severely limit its scope, such a decision doesn’t make abortion illegal overnight. Roe made it illegal to write laws banning abortions. Overturning it means states can again make abortion illegal, but it doesn’t stop other states from continuing to allow abortions.

Thank goodness reality-based states such as California are strengthening their abortion protection and access, not weakening them.

Remember, the best way for a man and a woman to avoid the need for an abortion is for the man to put a condom on his penis before intercourse. Yet once a man impregnates a woman – which is the only way to create the potential for an abortion, since it’s not very likely that a woman who used artificial insemination to get pregnant would turn around and want to abort –  she becomes the only one either medically or legally at risk if she would prefer not to give birth.

According to a story by CalMatters, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles has been preparing for years for the moment when the organization would become a haven for patients from all over the country by expanding and reorganizing its network of facilities to be near airports, bus and train stations, and supportive emergency rooms and medical providers.

Statewide, Planned Parenthood, which operates about half of the 165 abortion clinics in California, reports that it has treated at least 80 out-of-state patients per month on average since September, when Texas adopted a law allowing residents to seek civil damages against anyone who aids an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

Meanwhile, State Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins is sponsoring Senate Bill 1375, which would allow some nurse practitioners to independently perform first-trimester abortions without a doctor’s supervision.

Blue states across the country need to join California to fight the Red State cultural warriors who use anti-abortion laws to whip up their base. Don’t kid yourself, they don’t give a shit about the lives of newborns, or any other children in need – they just figured out that being anti-abortion was a political wedge issue they could exploit.