Reproductive irony: State constitutional amendment could diminish CA’n abortion rights?
Columnist Joe Mathews takes to Post US Zero to argue that highly-disputed CA’n abortion amendment SCA 10/Prop 1’s vague wording could actually create altered—even less comprehensive—abortion protections, by inviting dissension and potential reinterpretation in the courts. Golden State advocates, journalists, and attorneys are still debating how this bill informs late-term abortion legislation. To receive daily updates of new Opp Now stories, click here.
Proposition 1 is also vulnerable because of what it leaves out. In June, two legal scholars, Allison Macbeth of the California Constitution Center and Elizabeth Bernal, editor of the Hastings Law Journal, publicly urged the legislature to incorporate the limits Roe placed on abortion.
Roe strikes a balance between the rights of the woman and the rights of the fetus. The academics suggested clarifying that, in line with previous case law, no law could “deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose or obtain an abortion prior to fetal viability”.
Failure to mention prior existing law, Macbeth and Bernal added, would “detach” Proposition 1 from any strong privacy foundation. This could put both reproductive rights and other privacy-based rights, such as marriage, at risk of being reinterpreted by the courts.
“There is a substantial risk that the new California constitutional provision will be interpreted by the courts as having no effect, or that its foundations will be erased,” Macbeth and Bernal wrote.
These omissions also create political risk. The unqualified language of Proposition 1 gives opponents the opportunity to argue that the measure would establish a right to abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy. And it’s not popular policy — most voters don’t support second-trimester or later abortion. In contrast, polls show that more than 70% of Californians support Roe v. Wade – with its limits based on fetal viability.
But lawmakers have rejected calls to add limits to Proposition 1…
This article originally appeared in Post US Zero. Read the whole thing here.
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For further reading, check out Opp Now’s exclusive series on SCA 10/Prop 1. Local and national attorneys and advocacy organizations interpret the bill’s implications for late-term abortion legislation in the Golden State in several installments:
first (including SJ law professor, Right to Life of Central CA’s E.D., etc.),
second (including SJ-based Values Advocacy Council’s president, etc.),
third (including Pasadena constitutional attorney, Associate Counsel at the American Center for Law & Justice, etc.).
In the fourth series article, the Pro-Life Action League’s E.D. Eric Scheidler examines the Merc’s gauzy defense of this controversial amendment,
The fifth article continues highlighting perspectives on how the bill will inform late-term abortion law in the Golden State. It includes Visalia constitutional attorney, National Mobilization for Reproductive Justice in San Francisco, etc.