AB 54: Access to Safe Abortion Care Act.

SECTION 1.

The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) In 1973, the United States Supreme Court recognized a federal constitutional right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973) 410 U.S. 113. For nearly 50 years, and through numerous challenges, the federal courts consistently upheld this fundamental right. However, in 2022, the United States Supreme Court reversed course. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) 597 U.S. 215, the Court threw out decades of precedent, overruled Roe, and concluded that there was no federal constitutional right to an abortion. In reaching that conclusion, the Court “return[ed]” the authority to regulate abortion to the “people and their elected representatives” (id. at 302).

(b) Both before and after the Dobbs decision was announced, California enacted numerous measures to protect the right to an abortion at the state level. Chief among these is Section 1.1 of Article I of the California Constitution, which states that individuals in California have a constitutional right to choose to have an abortion.

(c) California’s decision to protect access to abortion as a matter of both individual rights and sound public policy is consistent with the promise of the Dobbs decision that abortion would be entrusted to the states and the normal political processes. However, in the wake of Dobbs, there are numerous threats to access to abortion care and reproductive rights, even in California. In particular, an ongoing court case, Missouri et al. v. U.S. FDA et al., Case No. 2:22-cv-00223-Z (N.D. Tex), threatens to upend access to mifepristone.

(d) In 2000, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mifepristone for use in the termination of pregnancy. In April 2019, the FDA approved a generic version of mifepristone.

(e) Mifepristone is usually used in combination with misoprostol to terminate a pregnancy. Misoprostol can also be used on its own to terminate a pregnancy. When mifepristone and misoprostol are used in combination, or when misoprostol is used alone to terminate a pregnancy, this is referred to as a “medication abortion,” to distinguish it from a procedural abortion.

(f) Today, providers and researchers estimate that over 60 percent of all abortions in the United States are done using medication abortion.

(g) With over 20 years of available data, medication abortion has proven to be remarkably safe and effective. Medication abortion has only a 0.4-percent risk of major complications, and a mortality rate of only 0.00064 percent. To put these figures in perspective, this is lower than the mortality rate associated with Viagra, which carries a 0.0049-percent mortality rate. Using medication abortion is also far safer than carrying a pregnancy to term, as the United States has an overall maternal mortality rate of 0.0329 percent.

(h) Instrumentalities of the State of California regularly acquire and provide mifepristone and misoprostol. The five medical centers owned and operated by the University of California, for instance, all routinely acquire and use mifepristone and misoprostol for their patients in a variety of contexts.

(i) Pursuant to the College Student Right to Access Act, each public university student health center (including at the University of California and California State University systems) is required to offer abortion by medication techniques onsite.

(j) The widespread availability of mifepristone and misoprostol, through both state instrumentalities and private actors, furthers the policies and goals of the State of California, including safeguarding the health and welfare of Californians — as a safe, effective, and accessible means of terminating a pregnancy, and by providing medical providers with safe and effective options to treat their patients under a wide variety of circumstances.