California’s ambitious abortion plan

The ongoing debate in the US Supreme Court about the legality of Mississippi Regulations Governing Termination of Pregnancy It could upend the landmark ruling that since 1973 has guaranteed federal access to abortion in the United States, with consequences for millions of people. Although it is impossible to accurately predict, according to some estimates, if this happens, the number of legal abortions in the country could drop by 14 percent (about 100,000 fewer legal abortions each year).

According to the Guttmacher Institute, which deals with abortion policies in the United States, if federal law was weakened or overturned, 26 of the 50 US states would want to ban abortion, with dire consequences: Millions of women could be forced to confront long trips too high an expense to go to states where abortion is still guaranteed; Others will have to give it up, while others will have to find unsafe ways to carry out the action.

In anticipation of this scenario, ca Getting ready To become a kind of “refuge” for women’s reproductive health across the country.

Local Democratic leaders, backed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, on Wednesday announced a proposal that would, among other things, require them to secure procedures and cover travel and accommodation costs for low-income women who want to go to California to have an abortion. . “Let’s think about what we’re witnessing at a very critical moment in women’s rights history,” said Tony J. Atkins, president of the California Senate. “We want people to know we’re going to be part of the solution.”

Context
In the United States, abortion is legal federally, as laid down in a Supreme Court ruling known as “Roe v. Wade” of 1973, but there is no single law that regulates procedures across the country: each state has its own rules that set standards and limits on which you can through which the pregnancy is terminated.

The fact that abortion became legal thanks to a sentence rather than a law, as well as the existence of very strong anti-abortion movements, has made abortion a particularly hot topic of debate among local political forces in many countries and among many states. Political leaders and the federal government. It also made it possible for states to legislate broadly on the issue, a process that in recent years has often gone in the direction of restricting the right to abortion and repealing Roe v. Wade.

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Last October, the Guttmacher Institute, which deals with abortion policies in the United States, estimated that during 2021 there were Enter 106 restrictions abortion across the country, and that 12 of those explicitly dealt with the ban.

The last example, in chronological order, is the Texas example: The law known as “Senate Bill 8” Voluntary termination of pregnancy is prohibited once medical personnel detect “cardiac activity” in the fetus, which usually occurs at around six weeks, a time in pregnancy when many women do not know they are pregnant. The law also encourages anyone to report doctors who practice abortion and all the people who make it possible, even those who help a woman pay her medical bills or just escort her to the clinic.

In addition to the case of Texas, which occupied the pages of all international newspapers, there are five other states that agreed in 2021 to a very large number of restrictions against abortion: Arkansas (20 restrictions), Oklahoma (16), Indiana, Montana, and South Dakota (9 each ). The resolutions made this year are in addition to the hundreds that have already been approved in recent years.

Between 1973 and October 2021, more than 1,300 abortion restrictions were enacted in US states, and since 2011 there have been nearly 600: it took nearly 40 years to assemble 56 percent of the restrictions imposed to date and only about a decade. the remaining 44 percent. These restrictions are intended to make abortion logistically too difficult or too expensive. They may include a prohibition on funding an abortion or using your private insurance, public or private, to cover termination of end-of-service care.

All, or all, of these restrictions have made it difficult to access termination of pregnancy and are the basis of the increasingly burdensome restrictions and prohibitions. Currently, in the United States, approximately 40 million women between the ages of 13 and 44 (58 percent of the total) live in states that have been shown to be hostile to abortion.

In 2019, the Guttmacher Institute also had Recommended That in the face of attempts to restrict the right to abortion, non-hostile states take a series of measures, such as providing insurance coverage, ensuring access to information, supporting adolescents’ access to the procedure, preventing clinical violence, increasing services and physicians who practice interruptions, or encouraging telemedicine.

It appears that California, where abortion clinics have already seen an increase in the number of women from Texas, has embraced the proposal more broadly.

California
California is a traditionally democratic state, and over the years it has introduced several laws to ensure free and safe abortion for women: it has decided, for example, that public college students will have free access to the drug procedure.

In 2014, California required private health insurers to reimburse for abortion practices. And when former President Donald Trump lobbied for this ruling to be rescinded, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom—whose Republicans recently tried— removed, to no avail He defined the maneuver as “a petty political act” adding that “care for women’s health is a public health issue.”

In May of 2019, California officially announced State guarantor of “reproductive freedom”, and undertakes to defend the right to abortion.

To give continuity and tangibility to the commitment, the California Future of Abortion Council (CA FAB Council) was established last September, a body of more than 40 organizations in favor of freedom of choice, backed by many politicians and founded, among others, by Governor Gavin Newsom. In December, the CA FAB issued a series of recommendations to “protect, enhance, and expand” abortion-related services in the state.

the Recommendations There are 45 divided into 7 main regions. They envision a series of actions to improve data collection and research and then prioritize interventions. They demand blocking misinformation and ensuring “accurate, culturally appropriate and comprehensive education about abortion and access to treatment”, and legal safeguards for abortion, abortion providers and abortion support organizations. They also plan to reduce administrative and institutional barriers to accessing pregnancy termination, increase funding for clinics, and establish a California Reproductive Endowment Authority to improve training for “physicians, professional nurses, nurse-midwives, paramedics and other health professionals with different backgrounds.”

The recommendations also call for helping clinics increase their workforce with grants for medical students committed to providing abortion services in less urbanized areas of the state, and with concrete support for their student loans. They say travel, accommodation or childcare costs should be covered for low-income women who go to California to have an abortion.

Finally, they demonstrated that clinics where abortions are performed get reimbursed for providing services provided by Medicaid, the government’s health coverage program for the poorest, even for those who aren’t California residents.

Gavin Newsom Ha to explain That the economic details of the recommendations be included in the next proposed budget, and that it would be possible to deal economically with the protection of women from other countries: a budget surplus of about $31 billion is expected for the next year.

It is difficult to say how many women would choose to go to California to have an abortion if federal law were repealed.

The Guttmacher Institute calculated that 132,680 abortions were performed in California in 2017, or about 15 percent of all abortions in the country. The number included people from other states as well as teens, who in the state are not required to have their parents’ permission to have an abortion. Planned Parenthood, the well-known nonprofit organization that provides health services to women and accounts for about half of all abortion clinics in California, says it has treated more than 7,000 people from other states by 2020.

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