In June, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the nearly 50-year, precedent-setting 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that established the constitutional right to privacy, including the right to an abortion.
The Supreme Court’s action returned abortion to states to regulate. In response, legislators from both political parties in the Legislature moved to add Proposition 1 to the Nov. 8 ballot.
Prop. 1 is a constitutional amendment that would codify the right to reproductive freedom in the California Constitution. Even in California, we need a constitutional amendment to protect reproductive freedom and we urge you to vote yes on Prop. 1.
In accordance with an overwhelming majority of Americans, we unequivocally believe that private and personal medical decisions should remain between patients and their health-care providers, and that doctors and nurses should not be threatened with legal or criminal penalties for providing basic health care to patients.
Whether, when and who to have a child with are the most intimate and personal decisions people make, and the government should not insert itself into such choices.
California has long been recognized as a state supportive of reproductive rights with strong individual privacy protections. Our state legalized abortion prior to Roe with the Therapeutic Abortion Act signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1967.
But the right to obtain an abortion is not explicitly enshrined in our state Constitution, rather it exists in statute.
In overturning Roe, Justice Samuel Alito opined that the right to privacy does not exist within the U.S. Constitution’s framework. Given that so many of our basic rights, freedoms and individual liberties are predicated on the right to privacy — now under activist judicial threat — we must act to enshrine basic rights into our state Constitution to help ensure that they cannot be taken away from us.
In California, only a majority of voters — not legislators — can amend our state Constitution.
Passage of Prop. 1 means that politicians, now or in the future, cannot deny or interfere with reproductive freedoms without a majority vote of the people of California.
Source: Noozhawk