California passes broad abortion-rights legislation

In California, the bill updates the 1967 state law that made abortion legal, and it further expands abortion rights, including a first-of-its-kind provision allowing nurses and midwives to prescribe abortion drugs.

That four such bills could make it through the legislature and past the governor's desk with relatively little debate and almost no public outcry, say activists, is astounding.

Although the US Senate recently rejected President Bush's nomination of an antiabortion judicial candidate, activists add, the scene in Washington and in many states generally remains hostile to expanding abortion rights.

"This is significant because it is a affirmative step to protect rights," says Susan Dudley of the National Abortion Foundation in Washington. "[In] many places, what you see is the opposite – abortion rights being chipped away."

A major reason for the difference is Davis. In him, the state with the most liberal views on abortion rights now has a governor deeply committed to improving women's access to abortion.

One of the first states to legalize abortion before Roe v. Wade, California is now governed by a man who warned at his 1999 inauguration address: attempts "to pass bills restricting women's constitutional rights [to abortion] . . . simply will not happen on my watch."

"He is the single most radical proabortion elected official in the US," says Brian Johnston of the Right to Life Foundation.

Governor Davis's success, however, makes many critics more exasperated than defiant.

Abortion opponents mostly have dismissed the new California abortion rights as largely symbolic, with one exception: the provision of the new abortion law that allows nurses to prescribe abortion pills like RU-486.

While the prescription must be under the supervision of a physician, that physician "can be in India," says Jan Carroll of the California ProLife Council.

"The physician only has to be available by phone," she explains.

Nurses have similar rights when dispensing drugs for serious illnesses.

But abortion opponents argue that abortion procedures are not as simple as taking a pill. A physician, they say, is crucial to provide full medical care during the process.

"Women will suffer the consequences," Ms. Carroll says.

Reproductive-rights advocates, not surprisingly, disagree.

They cite studies that suggest roughly half of all pregnancies in America are unintended, and they say California has taken the lead in supporting families' choices in planning their lives.

"It's a model for other states in guaranteeing women's reproductive rights and health," says Kate Michelman president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

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