Nine weeks into Lauren’s pregnancy, doctors detected a weak heartbeat during an ultrasound. Two weeks later, Lauren started bleeding, and she went back to her doctor’s office for a second ultrasound.
“Sure enough on the ultrasound screen you could tell it was a fetus disintegrating,” said Lauren, who asked the Sun to change her name.
Lauren’s doctor said she would not be able to carry the baby to term and gave her a choice: She could either miscarry naturally, or she could have a dilation and curettage procedure (D&C)—an abortion operation.
“I didn’t hesitate. I was grieving and I was scared, but I thought if there was a procedure that will get this over with—as in I don’t have to watch or witness or feel this fetus that I’m losing, this fetus dying inside of me—[I should],” Lauren said.
Her experience was already traumatic enough—she bled for two more weeks until her scheduled procedure—she said she couldn’t imagine not having the option to do a D&C.
But people across the country are losing access to abortion procedures like the D&C in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision from 1973 that gave women the constitutional protection to access abortions.
“You already feel like you have so little control of your body in that situation, to be told you have even less of it is really hard,” Lauren said. “It’s a lot of waiting and not knowing what your body is going to do. To exercise a little bit of control there I think helps with some of the healing and grieving in that situation.”
After the court’s June 24 decision, the California state Legislature passed a state constitutional amendment to solidify reproductive rights (like abortion access), drafted several bills to protect health care access and medical providers, and made historic investments in reproductive health care, according to government officials.
The amendment—now known as Proposition 1—will be on the November general election ballot, giving California voters the ultimate choice of whether to cement reproductive rights into the state’s constitution.
Roe v. Wade and Dobbs v. Jackson
In the late 1960s, “Jane Roe,” a pregnant, single woman, filed a class action lawsuit against the constitutionality of Texas laws that only permitted abortion where the procedure was necessary to save the life of the mother.
A three-judge district court ruled that the abortion statutes were “vague and over broadly infringing,” upon Roe’s Ninth and 14th Amendment privacy rights, according to the U.S. Supreme Court Center.
The ruling was appealed, and the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in December 1971. By 1973, the court—made up of all men at the time—found that the constitutional right to privacy “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”
Fifty years later, Dobbs v. Jackson, a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court case focused on the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that prohibits abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. In a 6-3 ruling, the justices upheld the law and stated that there was no constitutional right to abortion, overruling Roe v. Wade. Now, up to 26 states are expected to create abortion restrictions and limit access to abortions and reproductive care, which could affect 36 million women.
“The Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion, but several constitutional provisions have been offered as potential homes for an implicit constitutional right,” according to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling summary. “Guided by the history and traction that map the essential components of the nation’s concept of ordered liberty, the court finds the 14th Amendment clearly does not protect the right to abortion.”
Right to Life of the Central Coast—a Santa Maria-based pro-life group—said it “rejoiced” in the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, pledging to continue its efforts to help mothers.
“In a country founded on the truth that we are all endowed by our creator with unalienable rights including the right to life, Roe’s stripping the right to life from the unborn was a travesty of justice,” the Rights to Life board said in a statement. “The decision overturning Roe is an answer to prayer and work by countless pro-life activists for nearly five decades, a cause for joy and heartfelt thanksgiving to God.”
The reproductive rights state
Others aren’t so keen on rejoicing. Acting quickly in response to Dobbs, the California state Legislature passed SCA 10: a state constitutional amendment that would ensure that every individual has the fundamental right of privacy with respect to personal, reproductive decisions, and prohibit the state from interfering with a person’s right to abortion, said Shannon Olivieri Hovis, the California director for reproductive rights organization, NARAL Pro-Choice.
“This ensures we have an explicit right to abortion and contraceptive care that voters [can] approve for generations to come. It’s protective power over time, regardless of how this 6-3 anti-choice majority continues to undermine our federal right to privacy and protections embedded within that,” Olivieri Hovis said.
If the state’s voters pass the constitutional amendment in November, the only way for it to be overturned is through a similar process. Two-thirds of the majority in both the state Senate and Assembly would need to vote to overturn the amendment, and then voters would have to cast their ballots again, she said.
“It’s a high threshold, but it speaks to the fact that California is representing the eight in 10 Americans who support the right to obtain abortion and we were able to see that in our Legislature as they were able to get that on the ballot,” Olivieri Hovis said.
State Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) said that once the Supreme Court announced the Dobbs decision, the Legislature acted efficiently to ensure residents have reproductive rights.
“Because federal law supersedes state law, I don’t think California saw the immediate need to act until Roe v. Wade was overturned. Could California have done this before? Perhaps, but I think California was still working in line with the law that was in place at the federal level for decades,” Limón said.
Along with the constitutional amendment, California will invest $200 million of its budget to reproductive care, including $40 million to directly subsidize the cost of providing care to low-income or uninsured patients, $20 million to improve abortion clinic security, and $62 million in provider training.
The Legislature also proposed bills that would ensure medical privacy for out-of-state patients (AB 2091), establish a health equity program to provide grant funding to safety net abortion providers (AB 2134), and protect California providers against civil actions from abortion-restricted states (AB 1666).
“Because every state will do [abortion restrictions] differently, this ensures our ability to continue with this right and ensures our medical providers aren’t then susceptible to privacy issues, legal issues, safety issues when they are performing medical procedures,” Limón said. “We want to be consistent and [try] as much as we can to ensure that protections are there all the way around.”
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at [email protected].
