The end of the year gives an opportunity to look back upon the pro-life cause nationally and in California, to assess where we are going, and what more needs to be accomplished.
Thanks largely to President Trump, the accomplishments are significant. The President has enacted several excellent executive orders to defund abortion in state healthcare programs and overseas. Mr. Trump also eliminated the HHS Mandate and its onerous requirements that businesses and nonprofits provide their employees with abortion-causing forms of “contraception.” Justice Neil Gorsuch, along with the president’s other judicial appointees, have been excellent on life issues.
We even saw some success in California! Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed AB 569, a bill that would have prevented religious employers from enforcing pro-life employee codes of conduct. Two other anti-life bills were defeated: one creating a pro-choice vanity license plate, and another providing chemical abortion access on every CSU and UC campus in the state.
However, there were a number of shortcomings and outright defeats this past year. The Senate repeatedly failed to pass a reform of the Affordable Care Act (aka, “Obamacare”) that would eliminate funding for insurance plans that cover abortion, and would defund Planned Parenthood. Other legislation banning abortions after children can feel pain, and ending California regulations requiring all health insurance plans in the state to cover elective abortion, have similarly stalled in the Senate. President Trump also failed to replace the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, an Obama appointee who lead the charge to federally fund embryo-destructive stem cell research and human cloning. Sadly, the California Legislature passed SB 743, which expands the ability of Medi-Cal beneficiaries to get abortions from any provider, including Planned Parenthood.
We are grateful for the advances made, and it is up to all of us to urge our elected representatives to achieve more for the cause of life!