More facts about Abortion in the United States can be found at abort73

For a complete summary, see the full report here.

California actually legalized abortion six years earlier than the nationwide Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision.

On June 14th,  1967, the California Legislature enacted, and Governor Reagan signed, the Therapeutic Abortion Act, Health and Safety Code (sections 25950-25958). This statute allowed the termination of pregnancy by a physician, in an accredited hospital, when there was a specific finding that there was a substantial risk that its continuation would “gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother,” or when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.  After the Act became law, the number of abortions performed in California soared.

In 1973, the decisions of the U. S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton created the abortion-on-demand regime in constitutional law by allowing a woman’s health justification for an abortion to include her mental and psychological sense of well-being as well as her physical health.

In the 1981, the California Supreme Court found in the Committee to Defend Reproductive Rights v. Myers that the Medi-Cal ban on funding of abortions was unconstitutional.  The Court ruled that the restriction (of not being able to afford to pay for an abortion) was “an obstacle” to the exercising of the expressed constitutional right. The 1997 California Supreme Court decision regarding parental consent for abortion, American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lungren, ruled that a minor’s right to privacy superseded her parents’ rights as guardians. As a result parents have no right to even know about their minor daughter’s abortion.

With the passage of AB 154 in 2013, California allows non-physicians to perform surgical abortions, whereby nurses, physician assistants and certified midwives are now able to do abortion surgeries.  AB 980, also passed in 2013, essentially gutted abortion regulations in California. 

A Recap of Abortion Law in California

• Any pregnant female who cannot afford to pay for an abortion can request Medi-Cal services, thereby requiring taxpayers to subsidize her decision.
• Public schools are allowed to arrange for an abortion and transport a minor to an off-campus site for the procedure without parental notification or permission.
• Since the 20th week provision of the Therapeutic Abortion Act was invalidated by both Roe and Doe, a woman can get an abortion at any time during her pregnancy by invoking Roe and claiming a threat to her life or health.
• There is no requirement to keep statistics on the numbers of abortions performed, the ethnicity of the women, the number of repeat clients, and most importantly, the number and types of complications.
• There is no requirement to provide a female contemplating an abortion with medical and biological facts, with statistics regarding possible complications and health risks, or with alternatives such as adoption.
• There is no mandated waiting period between requesting and receiving an abortion.
• Two bills passed in 2013, include  AB 154 which allows non-physicians such as nurses, physicians assistants, and certified midwives to perform abortions, while  AB 980 de-regulated the abortion industry.
• In June 2014, the Democrat-controlled California state legislature passed and Governor Brown signed the state budget, which increased abortion funding Medi-Cal reimbursement rates by 40%, while cutting other Medi-Cal services by 10%.

According to the Guttmacher Institute,

• In California, 802,400 of the 7,917,182 women of reproductive age became pregnant in 2011. 63% of these pregnancies resulted in live births and 23% in induced abortions.

• In 2011, there were 512 abortionists in California.  This represents a 2% decline since 2008, when there were 522 abortion providers overall and 169 abortion clinics.

Unfortunately, California does not have waiting periods, has no parental involvement and our state publicly funds abortions at taxpayer expense. Therefore, our abortion rate is higher than the national average and California accounts for more abortions than any other state.

Yet, more Californians are recognizing the humanity of the child in the womb and choosing life, rather than abortion.  The number of women seeking abortions in California has fallen to its lowest level in decades, mirroring a national decline that has left the U.S. abortion rate at its lowest mark since the procedure was legalized in 1973, according to a recent study.

About 23 of every 1,000 women of child-bearing age had an abortion in California in 2011, down from 44 in 1991. Nationally, about 17 of every 1,000 women of child-bearing age had an abortion in 2011, compared to about 26 in 1991.  In 1973, the year of the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade, the national abortion rate was 16.3 per 1,000 women.