Bill Text: CA AB54 | 2025-2026 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Access to Safe Abortion Care Act.
Spectrum: Moderate Partisan Bill (Democrat 9-1)
Status: (Introduced) 2024-12-03 - From printer. May be heard in committee January 2. [AB54 Detail]
Download: California-2025-AB54-Introduced.html
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE—
2025–2026 REGULAR SESSION
Assembly Bill
No. 54
| Introduced by Assembly Members Krell and Aguiar-Curry (Principal coauthors: Senators Cabaldon, Pérez, and Weber) (Coauthors: Assembly Members Stephanie Nguyen, Pellerin, Ransom, Sharp-Collins, and Stefani) |
December 02, 2024 |
An act relating to reproductive health.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 54, as introduced, Krell.
Access to Safe Abortion Care Act.
Existing law sets forth provisions, under the California Constitution, regarding the fundamental right to choose to have an abortion. Existing law, the Reproductive Privacy Act, prohibits the state from denying or interfering with a pregnant person’s right to choose or obtain an abortion prior to viability of the fetus, or when the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.
This bill, the Access to Safe Abortion Care Act, would make legislative findings about medication abortion, with a focus on use of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. The bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would ensure access to medication abortion.
Digest Key
Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: NO Local Program: NOBill Text
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1.
This act shall be known, and may be cited, as the Access to Safe Abortion Care Act.SEC. 2.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) Consistent with Section 1.1 of Article I of the California Constitution, individuals in the State of California have a constitutional right to choose to have an abortion.
(b) In 2000, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mifepristone for use in the termination of pregnancy through 7 weeks of gestation, and extended its use to 10 weeks of gestation in 2016. In April 2019, the FDA approved a generic version of mifepristone.
(c) Mifepristone is usually used in combination with a second drug, called misoprostol, to terminate a pregnancy. Misoprostol can also be used on its own to terminate a pregnancy. When mifepristone and misoprostol are used in combination, or when misoprostol is used alone to terminate a pregnancy, this is referred to as
a “medication abortion,” to distinguish it from a procedural abortion.
(d) Today, providers and researchers estimate that over 60 percent of all abortions in the United States are done using medication abortion.
(e) With over 20 years of available data, medication abortion has proven to be remarkably safe and effective. Medication abortion has only a 0.4 percent risk of major complications, and a mortality rate of only 0.00064 percent. To put these figures in perspective, this is lower than the mortality rate associated with sildenafil, which carries a 0.0049 percent mortality rate. Using medication abortion is also far safer than carrying a pregnancy to term, as the United States has an overall maternal mortality rate of 0.0329 percent.
(f) Mifepristone and misoprostol are widely used for the outpatient treatment of miscarriage. Medical providers utilize mifepristone and misoprostol in these instances to guard against many
of the medical risks associated with miscarriage. During a miscarriage, a patient is at increased risk of infection and hemorrhage, which can lead to severe complications, permanent disability and loss of organ function, and, in extreme cases, death. The longer a miscarriage lasts, the greater the risk of these complications. A patient may also fail to fully pass the deceased fetus, placenta, or other products of conception, prolonging the process and increasing these risks. Mifepristone and misoprostol help to rapidly and completely empty the contents of a patient’s uterus, and thus mitigate these risks.
(g) There are a number of conditions, including, but not limited to, PPROM or dilation of the cervix, which, when they occur before the point of viability, result in what doctors refer to as an “inevitable miscarriage;” though the fetus may still be alive, it has no chance of surviving outside the womb or long enough to reach viability. Because the risk of serious and potentially
life-threatening complications increases as the pregnancy progresses, standard treatment in these tragic situations frequently involves administering mifepristone and misoprostol to immediately terminate the pregnancy.
(h) From a medical perspective, there is no difference between the case of using mifepristone and misoprostol to terminate a nonviable pregnancy, using those drugs to treat a miscarriage, or using them to terminate a viable pregnancy. In all cases, the same drugs are administered, and the same biological processes ensue.
(i) Misoprostol is also used to induce labor for patients with viable pregnancies — when, for instance, a patient’s pregnancy is going too far past term (41 or 42 weeks in most cases), or when a late-developing complication, such as hypertension or preeclampsia, makes an earlier delivery the safest option.
(j) Instrumentalities of the State of California regularly acquire and provide
mifepristone and misoprostol. The five medical centers owned and operated by the University of California, for instance, all routinely acquire and use mifepristone and misoprostol for their patients in a variety of contexts.
(k) Pursuant to the College Student Right to Access Act, each public university student health center (including at the University of California and California State University systems) is required to offer abortion by medication techniques onsite.
(l) The widespread availability of mifepristone and misoprostol, through both state instrumentalities and private actors, furthers the policies and goals of the State of California, including safeguarding the health and welfare of Californians — as a safe, effective, and convenient means of terminating a pregnancy, and by providing medical providers with safe and effective options to treat their patients in a wide variety of circumstances.
(m) There are
emerging threats to the availability of mifepristone and misoprostol, and California may not be able to guarantee a continued supply. Previously, Governor Newsom implemented a plan to stockpile doses of misoprostol. While this effort was successful, the Legislature finds that the state needs to renew its stockpile to ensure that Californians can continue to exercise their constitutional rights.
