Op-Ed: California must be a safe haven from abortion-ban states

Supreme Court case threatens to eliminate availability of abortion in at least 20 states.

When I view the current reproductive rights landscape, I think about my grandmothers’ death stories. My mom’s mother died at 41 before she came home from the hospital, after delivering her ninth child. My dad’s mother died during the Great Depression in the arms of her sister, my great aunt Jessie, who had performed an illegal abortion on her because she and my grandfather didn’t feel they could afford another child. She was 19.

Fast-forward to March 2020, when the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a critical case from Louisiana that could result in, once again, eliminating availability of abortion and affordable access to birth control in at least 20 states, directly affecting more than 25 million women of reproductive age.

California is not one of those places. But the message is clear: In our state, where we remain committed to expanding, not banning, access to reproductive health care — including abortion — we have an obligation to do even more to help people plan for and manage the drought for these services.

Already, California has become a refuge from states that are abortion-access deserts. Consider this snapshot of three women who traveled to our Planned Parenthood Mar Monte health center in Oakland over the past year.

A woman from Missouri had been ecstatic when fertility treatments resulted in her first pregnancy – but she was devastated later to discover there were profound health complications. Heartbroken, she and her husband decided to end the pregnancy, but she had no way to access abortion within hundreds of miles. She flew to California and received care here.

A college student in Atlanta discovered she was pregnant and not ready to have a child. It was easier for her to borrow money for a flight to the Bay Area than to find safe, legal abortion services in Georgia.

A woman from Texas, who was a victim of domestic violence, was terrified when she learned she was pregnant. Determined to end the pregnancy, she was unable to find services. She had just enough money for a flight to the Bay Area if she didn’t stay overnight. She arrived at our health center with her suitcase and a standby reservation to fly back to Texas only hours after her abortion.

This is the scenario after 300 bills restricting access to abortion were introduced by extremist politicians in 2019 alone. Abortion bans that were passed in 13 states last year, but have not yet been enacted, have set the stage for the Louisiana case, June Medical Services v. Russo, which the Supreme Court is expected to decide in June.

But California has continued to lead the way when these political attacks threaten to leave thousands with nowhere to go for services they need and deserve.

State investment in reproductive health care has doubled over the past two years, allowing Planned Parenthood and other community health providers to open more health centers and expand telehealth services.

This year, in order to safeguard the future of abortion access for Californians and for those outside the state, Planned Parenthood is supporting legislation that aims to break down barriers to receiving services, including inequities of reproductive health care insurance costs.

As abortion bans and extreme restrictions are passed in other states, California must continue to expand access and be a safe haven. Access to health care, and rights over your own body, should not depend on your zip code or how much money you have.

So many are counting on us. We cannot go back to the days of my grandmothers.

Stacy Cross is president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte.

Note: This opinion piece was originally published in the San Jose Mercury News on March 6, 2020. View it here.