WHEREAS, January 22, 2019, marks the 46th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) 410 U.S. 113, which affirmed that every woman has a fundamental right to control her own reproductive decisions and to decide whether to continue a pregnancy or obtain an abortion, and is an occasion deserving acknowledgment; and

WHEREAS, Roe v. Wade has been the cornerstone of women’s ability to control their reproductive lives, allowing every woman in the United States the right to decide when, if, and with whom to have children, and how many children to have, and has helped facilitate women’s economic and societal participation in the United States; and

WHEREAS, In the years prior to Roe V. Wade, illegal abortion accounted for approximately 17 percent of all reported deaths attributable to pregnancy and childbirth and many women were severely injured as a result of “back alley” abortion procedures; and

WHEREAS, Interference with a woman’s right to choose causes women to be forced into illegal and dangerous abortions, as they often were in the United States before the Roe v. Wade decision. Many women are forced to make these decisions today in countries where abortion is illegal and where the unsafe methods of illegal abortion lead to 13 percent of global maternal deaths annually, or 8 maternal deaths every hour; and

WHEREAS, Roe v. Wade continues to protect the health and freedom of women throughout the United States. National, peer-reviewed studies show that abortion is a safe medical procedure, increasingly provided through outpatient medication, that nearly one in four women in the United States will access; and

WHEREAS, Roe v. Wade is in serious jeopardy of being overturned or further eroded due to President Donald J. Trump’s appointment of two justices to the United States Supreme Court, both of whom have records of being hostile to women’s constitutional right to choose, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh; and

WHEREAS, States are passing legislation creating barriers to abortion and there are more than a dozen cases limiting abortion rights that could be considered by the Supreme Court of the United States; and

WHEREAS, Providers of sexual and reproductive healthcare are under serious, unrelenting attack for providing essential information and services, such as abortion, as evidenced by bomb threats, arson, and vandalism in California, and the fact that death threats against abortion providers doubled, and incidents of clinic obstruction tripled, nationally from 2016 to 2017 alone; and

WHEREAS, The State of California stands in strong support of every woman’s fundamental right, as confirmed in Roe v. Wade, to make her own decisions regarding her pregnancy, and commits to boldly advance access to sexual and reproductive healthcare within our state; now, therefore, be it