The Right to Life Report: June 2026
Welcome to the Right to Life Report
The Right to Life Report is a new initiative from Right to Life of Central California, a monthly newsletter focused on abortion public policy at the federal, state, and local levels.
It supplements John Gerardi’s pro-life commentary from his shows on News/Talk 580 and 105.9 KMJ, gathering the policy developments you need in one place. If you find it useful, we’d love to hear from you, and we hope you’ll share it widely.
Legislative Update: Oppose AB 1973
Abortion providers have long faced a problem: a shortage of practitioners actually willing to perform abortions. Mifepristone, the “abortion pill,” has been one way around it, since far fewer providers are needed to prescribe a drug (sometimes through a telemedicine visit alone) than to perform a surgical abortion.
California’s pro-abortion Legislature is now trying to expand the pool of people who may legally perform surgical abortions anyway, health risks be damned. AB 1973 would permit non-doctors, namely physician assistants and nurse practitioners, to perform any kind of surgical abortion.
That doesn’t just mean first-trimester Dilation and Curettage procedures. It also includes violent second-trimester Dilation and Evacuation abortions. Physician assistants and nurse practitioners have less training than physicians, and these surgeries can carry the risk of serious complications.
The abortion industry’s overriding concern has been “access.” Long gone are the Clinton-era days of advocates calling for the procedure to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Today the push is to knock down every obstacle a woman might face, even when that obstacle is a safety provision meant to protect her.
Take action: Ask your Assembly representative to oppose AB 1973.
California Wants Poor Women to Have Abortions, Not Babies
By John Gerardi
A new bill proposed by the California Legislature would extend a state grant to abortion providers who offer low- or no-cost abortions. The grant it extends, however, is a startling admission of what California prioritizes for poor women: abortion, not childbirth.
This grant provides funding to support providers giving abortions to Medi-Cal beneficiaries who are at or under 400% of the federal poverty line. Someone at 400% of the federal poverty line is, frankly, not poor: approximately $66,000 per year for a household of one, and over $120,000 per year for a household of four.
“California wants poor women to have abortions. The state doesn’t want them to have babies.”
California’s commitment to funding low- or no-cost abortion for anyone on Medi-Cal confirms what I have long suspected: California wants poor women to have abortions. The state doesn’t want them to have babies. It makes more financial sense for California to subsidize killing the children of poor women than to fund their births.
One has to understand the problems facing the Medi-Cal program to understand the state’s motives. Medi-Cal is California’s version of the federal Medicaid program, which provides state- and federally-subsidized health insurance for lower-income persons. A patient is covered by Medi-Cal after applying and meeting the requirements; she visits a Medi-Cal-accepting provider (doctor, nurse practitioner, clinic) for care; the provider gives the patient a healthcare service and bills Medi-Cal; Medi-Cal reimburses the provider.
The problem is that the reimbursement a provider receives for services to a Medi-Cal patient is much lower than what the provider would receive from a patient covered by private health insurance plans like Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross, or others. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Medi-Cal has covered an ever-increasing pool of Californians, and tax revenue to fund reimbursements (from the most heavily taxed state in America) cannot keep up with rising costs. For certain fields of medicine, doctors actually lose money caring for Medi-Cal patients.
OB/GYN care is one of those fields where physicians can lose money caring for Medi-Cal patients. A doctor delivering a Medi-Cal patient’s baby will make a third of what a doctor makes delivering a privately insured patient’s baby.
As a result, more and more OB/GYNs are choosing not to accept Medi-Cal patients for OB care. This leaves women with fewer options. For example, women in Madera County now have no place to deliver their babies, because Madera Community Hospital (after closing in 2023 and reopening in 2025) can no longer financially sustain its maternity ward. Lack of adequate prenatal care for lower-income women is a problem throughout California, particularly in rural counties and lower-income communities.
And yet where does California focus its efforts? Abortion. More funding, more programs, more subsidies, more providers available to perform abortions. Why? It is cheaper for Medi-Cal.
Medi-Cal offers under $600 in reimbursement for a mifepristone (pill) abortion and associated services. That is far cheaper than reimbursing for childbirth, postpartum care, and the ongoing costs of a new child who will likely also be a Medi-Cal beneficiary draining money from the system. Furthermore, Medi-Cal mothers tend to have more complications and a higher rate of “high-risk” pregnancies, making their care more expensive.
We have seen this dynamic of killing as cost savings before. In Canada, the “Medical Assistance in Dying” program (a ridiculous euphemism for euthanasia) has been promoted, in part, because it is an obvious cost savings. With Canada’s government-run healthcare system, the limited pool of taxpayer dollars obviously benefits financially from euthanasia rather than end-of-life or palliative care. The vast bulk of healthcare resources that most individuals consume tend to be consumed in the last year of life. If someone with a terminal diagnosis simply ends their own life or opts for euthanasia by means of a cheap drug, the cost savings to the government is enormous.
I am not saying that any one individual in California’s government consciously thinks about abortion in these terms. But it is clear that California public policy is aligned with its financial incentives.
