California Democrats are quietly racing to ratify new abortion protections ahead of a major Supreme Court case – pushing a bill that opens the door to legal infanticide.
“States including California, Colorado, and Connecticut are in a race to the bottom when it comes to abortion policy as Americans await a decision in Dobbs and states prepare for a post-Roe future,” Melanie Israel, policy analyst in the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation said.
“California policymakers are seeking to make the state a so-called ‘abortion sanctuary,’ at the expense of unborn children and at the behest of the abortion industry which profits from their deaths and hurts women in the process,” she added.
AB 2223, which passed the Assembly Health Committee on Tuesday, states that mothers cannot be held liable for either civil or criminal penalties “based on their actions or omissions” connected to a “perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.”
Perinatal typically refers to a few weeks before and after the baby is born.
California Family Council President Jonathan Keller praised Californians who traveled from all over the state this week to “tell legislators decriminalizing infanticide is barbaric and indefensible.”
“A political culture that justifies killing millions of children in the womb is now declaring open season on unwanted newborns,” he said. “Every Californian must oppose this heinous bill.”
Live Action President Lila Rose worried that “criminals who kill children up to four weeks old may be able to operate with impunity in California,” calling AB 2223 “potentially the most destructive pro-abortion bill in the nation.”
“The bill also gives a mother the right to sue any law enforcement agency for investigating or threatening to investigate her ‘pregnancy outcome’ including the perinatal death of her child,” she said. “That means if you find a dead infant in a dumpster, law enforcement is expected not to look into the matter if they think the child died after a failed abortion or from any ‘pregnancy-related cause.’”
Rose also expressed fears that the bill would leave babies born alive through botched abortion open to “murder or killing by neglect.”
AB 2223 would also delete the requirement that the coroner determine the cause of “violent, sudden, or unusual deaths” related to “self-induced or criminal abortion.” It would also delete the requirement that an “unattended fetal death be handled as a death without medical attendance.”
“The bill would prohibit using the coroner’s statements on the certificate of fetal death to establish, bring, or support a criminal prosecution or civil cause of damages against any person,” the legislation said.
“If a coroner thinks that the circumstances of a fetal death were suspicious or even criminal, or that the mother was being coerced, that information could not be used by law enforcement to investigate the suspected crime,” Rose said.
“Criminals will walk free because of this trojan horse supposedly meant to protect ‘reproductive freedom.’”
