California to Consider Further Liberalization of Abortion Access

Join Ricochet or renew and get 1 year
of National Review/Digital as a bonus!

California to Consider Further Liberalization of Abortion Access

Diane Ellis · April 27, 2012 at 12:07am

In June of 1967, then California Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act into law. The Golden State saw abortions skyrocket from just over 500 legal abortions per year in 1967 to an average of 100,000 abortions per year for the rest of Reagan's gubernatorial term. Abortion data today is sketchy, but The Alan Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood) reports that 214,190 abortions took place in California in 2008, the last reporting period. There are more abortions in California each year than in any other state, and an estimated 27+ out of every 1,000 women of childbearing age terminate a pregnancy there each year.

So as things stand, abortion in the state is shockingly high. But in a quest to make elective abortions ever more accessible and commonplace, California lawmakers are considering a bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Christine Kehoe of San Diego which would allow nurse practitioners, midwives, and physician assistants to perform first trimester "aspiration" abortions.

To support a measure like this, I think, is the point at which one moves beyond holding garden variety "pro-choice" views (preferring, like President Obama, that abortions be "safe, legal, and rare") to taking an unabashed pro-abortion, pro-death stance on the matter.

I have to go to a doctor to get a skin tag removed from my neck, but if Sen. Christine Kehoe and company had their wildest fantasies fulfilled, your yoga instructor or pizza delivery man would be legally qualified to terminate the life of an unborn baby.