News & Commentary

Imagine you're a soldier stationed overseas and discover you're pregnant. If you want to have an abortion but are living in a country where it's illegal, you might as well be living in pre-Roe v. Wade America. Why? Current federal law prohibits almost all abortion services at U.S. military hospitals, even if a woman pays for the procedure herself. So, like a woman in the 1950s, you can fly to another country to obtain safe, legal abortion care (if you can afford to travel and can arrange leave) or take your chances with an unsafe, illegal, local or self-induced abortion.

California's sex education policies are the envy of most other states. California is alone in having never accepted Title V federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funds, and state laws require that sex education in schools and state-funded community programs be comprehensive and bias-free. California's laws have served as models for other states and the federal Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act legislation. Recently, the Guttmacher Institute praised California as being way out front in preventing unintended pregnancy among teens, in part because of the state's embrace of comprehensive sex education.

For the third time in four years, voters in California rejected a measure that would have endangered the health and safety of pregnant teenagers. Proposition 4 represents a third strike against mandatory parental notification laws and the harms they cause.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision  issued on April 18, 2007 upholding a federal law banning certain abortions will endanger women's health and is a set back for all Americans who believe politicians should not legislate medical decision-making.  The decision disregards the opinion of leading doctors and medical organizations that oppose the ban because it is harmful to women's health.