Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed legislation temporarily allowing Arizona abortionists to travel to California to perform the procedure on Arizona patents.
S.B. 233 will “immediately allow Arizona abortion care providers in good standing to register to provide abortion care on a temporary basis in California to patients from Arizona,” according to a press release from the governor’s office.
Newsom’s action comes as a reaction to the Arizona supreme court’s April decision that upheld an 1864 law that bans all abortions in the state except those deemed necessary to save the life of the mother. The Arizona court ruled that because the federal right to abortion was nullified with Roe v. Wade’s reversal, no federal or state law prevents the enforcement of the 160-year-old statute, which predates Arizona’s statehood.
“Absent the federal constitutional abortion right, and because (the 15-week abortion law) does not independently authorize abortion, there is no provision in federal or state law prohibiting (the 1864 law’s) operation. Accordingly, (the 1864 law) is now enforceable,” Justice John R. Lopez IV wrote in the majority opinion.
Earlier this month, Arizona governor Katie Hobbs signed into law a repeal of the old law, effectively replacing it with a 2022 statute that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The governor condemned the ban, as it “was passed by 27 men before Arizona was even a state, at a time when America was at war about the right to own slaves,” she said at the legislation’s signing ceremony. “This ban needs to be repealed. I said it in 2022 when Roe was overturned, and I said it again and again as governor.”
The repeal won’t take effect until 90 days after the state’s legislative session ends sometime this summer, expected in June or July, meaning it won’t go into effect until September at the earliest. The session’s end date has not been scheduled yet. Meanwhile, the 1864 abortion ban could be implemented as early as June 27. Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes previously said the earliest date it could be enforced was June 8.
As a “backstop” for Arizona patients seeking abortions while the enforcement of the 1864 law remains uncertain, Newsom and the California Women’s Caucus enacted S.B. 233. The law temporarily authorizes licensed Arizona abortion doctors in good standing to perform abortions on Arizonans in California, “meaning they could cross the border and continue to provide care legally to their Arizona patients,” the press release said.
The law also claims to facilitate continued access to abortion when Arizona’s 15-week restriction goes into effect. A fact sheet from Newsom’s office cites Guttmacher Institute data showing that last year, 160,000 people traveled outside of the state they live in to undergo abortions. In the first 15 months after Roe was overturned, California abortionists performed more than 12,000 additional abortions than was expected if Roe had not been overturned. States that allow abortion that border a state that has limited the procedure also surged by about 37 percent between 2020 and 2023, the fact sheet said.
This is the not the first time Newsom has tried to make California a so-called sanctuary state for progressive causes. In September 2022, Newsom signed legislation that would facilitate child gender-transition tourism from other states, allowing out-of-state kids to receive gender-transition surgery and hormone therapy without the knowledge or consent of their parents. The bill included a number of provisions designed to insulate from prosecution residents of red states that have banned child gender-transition.