How the Anti-abortion Movement Is Impacting California

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, California politicians have attempted to position the state as a haven for people seeking an abortion – especially when, just months later that same year, voters successfully enshrined the right to an abortion in the state constitution.

Among the efforts to strengthen abortion protections are “shield laws,” which aim to protect patients and providers against “out-of-state investigations and prosecutions, professional discipline, and civil liability.” One of these laws specifically prevents local law enforcement — and California corporations — from cooperating with any out-of-state entities looking into legal abortions done in the state.

Meanwhile, State Attorney General Rob Bonta is continuing to pursue a lawsuit against a Catholic-affiliated hospital for allegedly refusing to provide an emergency abortion.

However, recent federal action and the anti-abortion movement’s aggressive tactics have made palpable impacts in the state.

For example, last month, Planned Parenthood was forced to shut down five clinics in Northern California after President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that halts Medicaid funding for the non-profit organization for at least a year. And California’s state laws will be put to the test by a Texas man’s lawsuit against a California doctor for allegedly providing his partner with abortion-inducing drugs.

“What we’ve seen so far in 2025 is a reminder that there will be any number of challenges in court, a lot of which could have profound consequences in California,” said Mary Ziegler, professor of law at UC Davis’ School of Law. “California lawmakers are aware of this.”

KQED’s Forum spoke to Ziegler and Shefali Luthra, a reproductive health reporter with The 19th, about the legal state of reproductive care in California – and the five cases that could have the biggest impacts.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Case to watch #1: A Texas resident, Jerry Rodriguez, is suing Bay Area doctor Dr. Remy Coeytaux, for allegedly providing his girlfriend with abortion-inducing drugs.

Rodriguez is asking the judge to award him at least $75,000 in damages for “wrongful death of his unborn child.”

Mary Ziegler: This is one of a series of “wrongful death” lawsuits that have appeared in recent weeks, all of which rely on the Comstock Act … a 19th-century obscenity law that was primarily designed to prevent people from mailing a wide variety of things deemed to be immoral.

No one thought it was necessary to repeal the Comstock Act. I think there was always a sense that there were other priorities and that it was just too outrageous that anyone would try to revive a 19th-century obscenity law that was used to burn books and attack medical texts in the 21st century. Of course, that’s not turned out to be correct.

The lawyer behind the [Rodriguez] lawsuit argues that this statute also makes it illegal under federal law to mail abortion pills. So, the argument is that a California doctor has mailed pills to people in Texas, who have used the pills — and that, as a result, those abortions were, in fact, wrongful deaths. There’s a fetal personhood argument in the mix, too.

The game plan is obviously not just to target a doctor in California, but to get the federal courts to weigh in on the theory that there already is, in fact, a federal ban on mailing any abortion drug or any medical device used in an abortion.

I think they’re also trying to force some kind of response from the Trump administration, which has been asked by abortion opponents in the Senate and outside of Congress, to weigh in on this Comstock Act theory now for months – and the Trump administration has been silent. So, if California says its shield law applies, if Texas says its abortion ban applies, ultimately the goal is to get that question before the conservative Supreme Court as well.

Shefali Luthra: This has become a really critical area for abortion opponents, and it’s because they’re looking at the numbers. And they have seen that even in the past few years, since the fall of Roe v. Wade [that] allowed for abortion bans, the number of abortions done in this country has not declined. If anything, it’s actually gone up.

Part of that is because people are traveling out of state to get abortions, but also because a lot of people are getting abortion pills through the mail — from healthcare providers in states like California, like New York, like Massachusetts, where they have these shield laws that protect providers from out-of-state prosecution, and that allow them to prescribe and mail abortion medication to people in states with bans. It’s very safe and it’s very effective, and abortion opponents are deeply frustrated by [people getting medication through the mail.]

Luthra: I just spoke to a provider earlier today, and she told me she is a shield law provider and is starting to feel nervous, for the first time in quite a while, that the federal filings in particular may be a sign that these threats are really amping up. And that there is a possibility that this model could be under a more serious threat than it has been.

At the same time, the number of shield provisions – the prescriptions being sent and filled – hasn’t gone down yet.

[(California Assembly Bill 260 has] been one of the next steps that a lot of these shield law states are looking at, as a way to try and undercut the threats of these legal actions we are seeing from states like Texas and Louisiana. The idea is that if a prescriber’s name isn’t on the bottle, that’s just one more barrier that makes it harder to file an individual case or an individual lawsuit.

Case to watch #2: In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected anti-abortion groups’ challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Mifepristone. 

Ziegler: The Supreme Court decision in 2024 was very much just on a technicality. The people who were suing didn’t have standing to sue. Their standing argument was so bad that this Supreme Court unanimously rejected it.

Having said that, lots of other people are trying to show that they have standing to challenge the FDA’s approval of Mifepristone.

Luthra: There has been a lot of pressure, including from some conservative senators, to get an FDA review of Mifepristone. [Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] has said, “Yes, I have directed the FDA to initiate this review in response to some data that has been put out by anti-abortion organizations.” At the same time, nothing has come of that.

Case to watch #3: California law requires that hospitals provide stabilizing care in an emergency. Last September, the state sued the Catholic-affiliated Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Humboldt County for allegedly refusing to perform an emergency abortion.

The patient in question, Anna Nusslock, was rushed to another hospital for the life-saving surgery.

In the latest update on the case, Bonta filed a motion this summer to require the hospital to comply with state laws around emergency abortions.

Luthra: [There’s] a broader, very deeply rooted trend across the country, which comes from hospital consolidation, hospitals buying other hospitals, hospitals buying physicians’ practices, and a few hospital healthcare provider companies becoming very big and very influential. As that’s been happening, a lot more hospitals and healthcare providers have become Catholic affiliated hospitals.

And that comes with a lot of complications and potentially concerns for access to reproductive health care. Those are often really fraught in some religious spaces. We have seen time and time again, hospitals and health providers that are religiously affiliated deny patients that healthcare, citing their religion.

In a lot of parts of the country, it’s not as if you can go somewhere else for that healthcare. If you are miscarrying, that can be really medically urgent, and you don’t have time to drive an hour to find another healthcare provider.

Ziegler: [Bonta is] not making a constitutional argument; he’s relying on a state statute to say that the hospital, in effect, discriminated on the basis of sex by denying emergency care to pregnant people. The argument being that pregnancy and sex are so inextricably linked that discriminating on the basis of pregnancy or miscarriage is the same thing as discriminating on the basis of sex.

There are other arguments in play, too. The hospital wants to argue that it has federal constitutional rights to refuse care, even if someone is dying, under the First Amendment. So they would like to be in federal court.

It’s an important look into how California is trying to say that denying reproductive health care is not just a violation of autonomy: it’s a violation of equality. But it’s also a window into how conservatives at the national level are trying to counter that push in California by relying on the idea of religious liberty. So we’re likely to see this play out for a while.

The hospital has no interest in being in state court in California, where I think California’s argument will prevail. So the hospital is looking instead for ways to get into federal court and, ultimately, to the U.S. Supreme Court, because we’ve seen the U.S. Supreme Court define religious liberty ever more broadly, particularly for conservative Christians in scenarios like this one.

Case to watch #4: The recent passage of President Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” cuts Medicaid funding for health care providers that perform abortions for at least one year. 

In late July, Bonta and 22 other states, plus D.C., filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration, arguing that Planned Parenthood is being targeted for its pro-abortion advocacy. Planned Parenthood organizations are also challenging the bill in the Massachusetts courts.

Luthra: Even one year of losing Medicaid funding is a very big deal for a lot of Planned Parenthood affiliates. They really rely on this – a lot of the patients they serve are Medicaid-covered patients. I’ve talked to clinics who say we could be losing as much as a third of our revenue if we can’t bill Medicaid.

Already, we’ve seen clinic closures in California, in Ohio, in other parts of the country as well, citing these losses. This is really important because Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider, but it also offers a lot of other healthcare services. It’s often the most affordable place for people to go. In some communities, it’s the only option.

Ziegler: There’s a doctrine called the Bill of Attainder that essentially occurs when legislators punish you without a trial. Planned Parenthood is arguing that that’s what this bill represents.

Planned Parenthood is also arguing that affiliates are being penalized for their association with Planned Parenthood. Not because they offer abortion, but rather because they affiliate with an organization that advocates for reproductive rights.

Neither of those is a bad argument, but neither of those [are] a slam dunk, and both involve bodies of law that are messy and contradictory. And all of that is a recipe, I think, for a loss at the current US Supreme Court.

Ziegler: Having said that, it may be more important for Planned Parenthood to win in the lower courts. In other words, to keep that funding available in the interim.

This limit will expire right before the midterm, which was not lost on a lot of Republicans from competitive districts in states like California – because they did not want to have to explain to constituents that they had voted for a bill that permanently defunded a lot of reproductive healthcare providers. So I think the longer clinics, more clinics, stay open, the more political pressure there will be not to make this a permanent change when next summer rolls around.