Newsom pledged that California would continue to ‘protect and advance reproductive freedom for all’. California abortion clinics are building new facilities closer to transit hubs and training more staff. A package of a dozen abortion rights bills moving through the Legislature could expand the number of providers, provide financial assistance to women traveling to California to terminate their pregnancies, and legally protect the doctors who treat them.
That move turbocharged a political and cultural battle that has all but cut off abortion access in the most conservative parts of the country in recent years and sent advocates in liberal states scrambling to build a bulwark for reproductive rights. Dunlap declined to provide data on how many out-of-state patients the organization serves, arguing that the numbers would not fully reflect the situation because of the secrecy and fear surrounding abortion. But she noted that Los Angeles, as a center of tourism and commerce, has long been a destination for women seeking abortions — even before it was legal, when patients often then crossed the border to Mexico for the procedure.
Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which covers Northern and Central California and Northern Nevada, said it treated 66 out-of-state patients at its California clinics between September and March, including 22 patients from Texas. One of them was a college student who was prepared to use her scholarship money to fly to California until it provided her with a voucher, according to an anonymous patient testimony shared by the organization.
The work is personal for Cross: Both of her grandmothers died from a lack of access to reproductive care — one from an illegal abortion and the other in childbirth, delivering her ninth child at age 47, she said. She worries that Californians don’t fully understand how quickly and fully abortion access could shut down across the country if the Supreme Court reverses the Roe decision.
Liberal states are responding with their own measures to protect the right to abortion in law, and to increase access to accommodate a potential influx of patients from beyond their borders. “California has been on the forefront for a long time,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute, which researches and promotes reproductive rights. “It has helped other states see what’s possible.”California is pushing further still. In September, after the Texas law took effect, Gov. Gavin Newsom convened the Future of Abortion Council, a coalition of reproductive rights, health and justice groups, to explore how to make the state a “sanctuary” for abortion.
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