Arizona abortion doctors can now travel to California to get around a resurrected 160-year-old pre-state law. Making abortion illegal It criminalizes abortion in almost all circumstances.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who just returned from speaking at the Vatican Climate Summit in Rome, signed Senate Bill 233 on Thursday afternoon.
“Arizona Republicans have attempted to turn back the clock to 1864 in order to impose a near-total abortion ban across the state,” Governor Newsom said in a statement. “We refuse to acquiesce and condone their oppressive and dangerous attacks on women.”
Following news of the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision, Governor Newsom, who had sponsored the bill with the state’s women’s caucus, said he was “grateful to be able to provide this backstop.”
“California is prepared to protect reproductive freedom,” he said.
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Governor Newsom signed SB233 on Thursday. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
SB 233, authored by Democratic state Sen. Nancy Skinner, would immediately exempt Arizona abortion doctors from punishment in their home states and allow them to “temporarily” perform abortions on Arizona women in California. The bill passed the state Senate this week after passing the state Assembly.
“With Governor Newsom signing SB 233, our Arizona sisters can come to California and get the care they need from their own doctors they know and trust,” Skinner, who chairs the Women’s Caucus, said Thursday. “And Arizona doctors can come to California without fear of the two-to-five year prison sentence provided for by Arizona’s 1864 law. California has once again made it clear to all who need or provide basic reproductive health care: ‘We will protect you.'”
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Mifepristone (Mifeprex) and misoprostol are two drugs used in medical abortion. (Robin Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
This month, the pro-life governor furthered his national pro-abortion campaign by releasing an ad targeting Alabama Republicans who oppose a bill allowing women to have abortions. Seeking an abortion The ad, which bans out-of-state travel, shows a police officer pulling over a woman and handing her a pregnancy test kit and says, “Trump Republicans want to criminalize young Alabama women who travel for reproductive health care.”
California is It is one of several blue states that expanded access to abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022. In an interview with MSNBC host Jen Psaki on Sunday, Gov. Newsom cited abortion restriction efforts in Tennessee, Idaho and Oklahoma as attacks that are “happening in real time” and said, “In order to be more aggressive and proactive, the response has to be in real time.”
In April, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the state should return to its pre-stateization near-total abortion ban. The law also makes it a felony punishable by two to five years in prison to “furnish, supply, or administer to a pregnant woman any medicine, drug, or substance, or to cause a pregnant woman to ingest any medicine, drug, or substance, or to use or employ any instrument or other means with the intent to induce a miscarriage in a pregnant woman, except as necessary to save the life of that pregnant woman.”
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Maria Peña holds a rosary and a sign outside an abortion provider building in Dallas, Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. (AP Photo/LM Otero) (AP Photo/LM Otero)
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law, The law, enacted in 1913 after Arizona became a state, includes an exception for cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
Last month, the Democrat-controlled California Assembly rejected a bill that would have required seventh through 12th grade curriculum to include details about free resources available at anti-abortion pregnancy care centers.
