SACRAMENTO — Arizona doctors could allow their patients to have abortions in California under a proposal announced Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom to bypass a ban on just about all abortions in that state.
It would apply only to physicians licensed in Arizona and their patients and would last only through the top of November. Arizona's 1864 law, which bans just about all abortions except when the mother's life is in peril, takes effect June 8.
“Arizona Republicans continue to endanger women – by embracing a draconian law passed when Arizona was still a territory and not even a state,” Newsom said in an announcement. “California will not sit idly by.”
In addition to Arizona, 14 other states have banned abortions in any respect stages of pregnancy. While abortion access has never been seriously threatened in California, Newsom — widely viewed as a possible presidential candidate beyond 2024 — has made defending that access a priority of his administration.
Newsom pushed to enshrine abortion access within the California Constitution. He approved $20 million in taxpayer money to permit women from other states to return to California for abortions. He signed dozens of laws designed to make it harder for other states to analyze women coming to California for abortions, including banning social media corporations from complying with subpoenas or arrest warrants.
His actions have endeared him to the Democratic Party's core constituencies despite a few of the state's other problems – including homelessness, wildfire insurance and two multibillion-dollar budget deficits.
In 2022, months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade repealed, California launched a publicly funded website to advertise the state's abortion services, including details about financial assistance for travel expenses and to let teenagers in other states know that California doesn’t require them to acquire their parents' permission to have an abortion within the state to be carried out.
When an Alabama lawmaker introduced a bill that might make it against the law to assist an individual under 18 have an abortion without telling her parents or guardian, Newsom paid for an ad that featured a young woman , who attempted to go away the state only to have a police officer stop her and demand that she take a pregnancy test.
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