Fight among states over abortion rights gets more intense

SACRAMENTO — The Supreme Court’s ruling ending the constitutional right to an abortion has ignited a battle among states that Gov. Gavin Newsom intensified Friday by signing a new law aimed at preventing other states from infringing on people’s rights to travel to California for the procedure.

“The Supreme Court has stripped women of their liberty and let red states replace it with mandated birth,” Newsom wrote in a tweet. “CA, OR and WA are creating the West Coast offensive … Time to fight like hell.”

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the conservative majority, “Given that procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right, it follows that the states may regulate abortion for legitimate reasons.” Many states had already passed socalled trigger laws making abortion illegal in the event that Roe was reversed.

Other states, including California, are scrambling to protect patients who travel to their states to obtain the procedure. It’s not at all clear how law enforcement officials and courts in other states would go about enforcing states’ antiabortion laws in states where the procedure is legal.

On Friday, Newsom signed AB1666, a measure that aims to protect people who get or help others get abortions from civil liability in California. It’s one of the measures in a package of bills that California lawmakers have said they will pass to protect people who travel to California for abortions and the doctors who perform the procedure.

Several other measures are still moving through the California Legislature. They include AB2223, which would strengthen protections in California law against prosecution of abortions and miscarriages, and AB2091, which would

forbid health providers from releasing medical information about a person seeking or obtaining an abortion in response to a subpoena based on another state’s ban. Both bills are set to be heard in committee next week. Newsom says he will sign them.

Newsom said the measures will be essential as other states ban abortion and attempt to curb access beyond their borders. He pointed to Texas’ anti-abortion law that allows people to sue anyone who helps women obtain abortions, which he said could be used against people who pay for Texans to travel to California for the procedure.

Some lawmakers in Texas have said that they want to do just that, the Texas Tribune has reported. They have also threatened businesses that say they will pay for women to travel to other states to get abortions, the Tribune reported.

Other states have also passed copycat versions of Texas’ ban that allows people to sue those who help others get abortions, including Idaho and Oklahoma.

In Missouri, one lawmaker tried earlier this year to explicitly bar women from traveling to other states to have abortions, although that effort failed amid questions about