As part of well over a dozen new abortion and so-called reproductive health bills, Gavin Newsom, the Democrat Governor of California, signed into law one new piece of legislation that has caused some intense worry amongst pro-life advocates.
Assembly bill 2223 would end up banning coroners from holding an inquest in the wake of a fetal death “related to or following known or suspected self-induced or criminal abortion.” The bill would go on to clarify via the Reproductive Privacy Act that pregnancy loss — either through abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or even perinatal death due to issues that happened in utero — would now not be criminalized.
Newsom officially signed the bill, making the promise to “fight like hell” for those that want to get abortions as quite a few different states nationwide deal with the aftermath of the monumentous decision from the U.S. Supreme Court this past summer to overturn Roe v. Wade, and hand the power to regulate abortion laws back to the individual states.
As the author of the new legislation, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), expressed to The Los Angeles Times that legislators made the bill in order to “ensure and enshrine that no person can be criminally prosecuted for something that happens in utero, which has happened in California.”
Wicks made the argument that since the early aughts roughly 1,300 pregnant “people” have been prosecuted criminally for having stillbirths, miscarriages, or for “self-managing” abortions.
However, the lawmakers from California who stand against the legislation have warned that such laws could only end up putting unborn children in intense danger by blocking the starting of investigations.
State Sen. Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore), who has routinely called out Wicks since the introduction of the bill in the state legislature, labeled the bill a “grotesque callousness toward the unborn.”
“With Newsom’s signing of AB 2223 if you attempt to abort your baby but it’s born alive, you can now let it die or kill it and no one can investigate the death or hold the woman/person who helped her criminally liable,” stated Melendez via a recent social media post. “This is grotesque callousness toward the unborn.”
The vice president of legal affairs for the Right to Life League, Susan Swift, stated to The Epoch Times that what has been done by these California lawmakers concerning abortion across the state is entirely “horrific.”
Back in June, members of the Right to Life League created an open letter targeting the lawmakers of California regarding the bill, saying that it was very poorly written and could entirely deregulate the entire industry of abortion.
“In its attempt to protect women from prosecution for abortion, AB 2223’s overbroad language creates a host of unforeseen legal ramifications,” expressed the letter. “The bill potentially de-regulates abortion and overrides existing medical protections for women by creating a class of cooperating individuals unaccountable to state licensing agencies or regulations.”
The group stated that this AB 2223 is going further than just protecting pregnant women from prosecution.
“Nobody’s going to want to risk the lawsuit of investigating [a death],” explained Swift to The Epoch Times. “And it’s going to cover up all the data of all of the babies that survive abortions.”
Newsom signed this new bill just prior to the upcoming midterm elections in which the citizens of his state will vote on Proposition 1, a possible amendment that would not let the state “deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”