While many of us have long anticipated and dreaded this moment, yesterday’s leak of a draft Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case, explicitly overturning the past decisions of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was nonetheless shocking and deeply disturbing.
Decades of work by right-wing legal groups have led to this moment, undermining fundamental civil rights for the majority of all Americans. If this draft remains the majority opinion, it will set our country back 50 years. Women will die because of this decision. This is a supremely dark day for the Court.
Throughout my career as a lawyer and lawmaker, I have been a steadfast defender of reproductive rights during difficult battles. As an Assemblymember, working alongside NARAL, I authored the Reproductive FACT Act to ensure that Californians would receive access to scientific, unbiased health information––which we defended all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court against challenges by anti-abortion groups and the Trump Administration. In my last year in the Legislature, I stood with Planned Parenthood in authoring AB 1184 to protect the confidentiality of patients seeking sensitive healthcare services, including reproductive and gender-affirming care.
Yes, even in California, there is always more we can do. We are fortunate to live in a state that has led nationally on reproductive justice, but there is always more we must do to protect our rights. Along with other measures, I look forward to standing with my former colleagues in the Legislature to ask voters in our state to enshrine reproductive rights in our California Constitution.
As City Attorney, I will do everything in my power to protect reproductive rights, no matter what happens at the federal level or in other states, and my deputies and I have been looking for ways to strengthen these rights. Rest assured, we will take any legal means necessary to defend our progress on reproductive rights if challenged, and will look for opportunities to use the role of the law to protect our core civil rights, as I have throughout my career.
In the meantime, many of you have asked what you can do to make our voices heard. If you have time or resources, please support an organization or health care clinic involved in providing or advocating for reproductive healthcare. You can also help the cause of defending reproductive rights by ensuring you and everyone you know––here in California and throughout the country––vote in this year’s critical midterm elections. No one can sit on the sidelines during these harrowing times.