‘Disheartening’ scorecard shows dip in California lawmaker support for abortion rights

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SCORECARD SHOWS FLAGGING LAWMAKER SUPPORT FOR REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM

2022 was a banner year for California abortion rights advocates. 2023 was not.

Proposition 1 in 2022 enshrined the right to an abortion in the state constitution and lawmakers passed a slate of bills aimed at shoring up reproductive freedoms in the Golden State.

2023 saw a dip in support from lawmakers, at least according to the legislative scorecard released Thursday by Reproductive Freedom for All California, formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice California.

The scorecard — which rates California lawmakers not just on how they voted on abortion rights legislation, but whether they signed on as lead author or co-author — found that 60 legislators earned the designations of “reproductive freedom champion” or “reproductive freedom leader” last year.

That’s down from 80 lawmakers in 2022, said Reproductive Freedom for All California Director Shannon Olivieri Hovis, in an interview with The Bee.

“So that frankly is a little bit disheartening from just a year and a half out from Roe v. Wade being overturned,” she said.

Olivieri Hovis urged California lawmakers not to look at 2022 as a “one and done year,” but to continue fighting for abortion rights, even as other states are cracking down on them.

“This is my call to action to them. This is an ongoing crisis, this is an ongoing fight, we are far from done,” she said.

Olivieri Hovis stressed that it’s not enough to just vote for reproductive freedom legislation. That earns you a “B,” she said.

She added that to earn a top designation, lawmakers must stick their necks out and actually attach their names themselves to those bills as authors.

FENTANYL WARNING BILL RETURNS FOR CONSIDERATION

Sen. Thomas Umberg, D-Santa Ana, isn’t one to take “no” for an answer.

The state lawmaker on Wednesday announced that he is resurrecting “Alexandra’s Law” — a bill to require that those found guilty of fentanyl-related drug offenses be given a written advisory or admonishment warning them that they could be subject to potential criminal liability if somebody overdoses and dies as a result of their product.

Last year, that bill, in the form of SB 44, died in the Senate Public Safety Committee. Democratic members of that committee voiced concern that the bill could contribute to California’s incarceration rate, particularly among people of color.

Umberg has gutted and amended SB 21 to carry the bill forward in 2024, with the addition of a requirement that those found guilty of fentanyl-related offenses be required to complete drug treatment or a drug court program.

“Fentanyl is not going away, and neither am I,” Umberg said in a statement.

Umberg acknowledged the Public Safety Committee’s concerns and said that his bill was amended with those in mind.

“With ever-growing concern in both houses and public opinion off the charts demanding a legislative response to our fentanyl epidemic, I am confident that we’re poised for success in 2024,” he said.

SB 21 currently sits in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Umberg said that having the bill in the Assembly “will allow for a different set of discussions with open minds.”

BUTLER DELIVERS MAIDEN SPEECH ON SENATE FLOOR

Via Gillian Brassil...

In her first speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Laphonza Butler raised her concerns about the future of democracy and hope around young people engaging to fix it.

Butler, D-Calif., said she was worried about school lockdowns to prepare for gun violence being commonplace; rising suicidal thought rates, especially among young LGBTQ children and Black girls; the Supreme Court overturning of federal abortion protections; other issues like lacking mental health care resources and poverty.

But, she said, young people have met the moment to both draw attention and rectify these problems.

“’Generation Now’ might be cynical,” she said, “but they are not sitting it out.”

Butler said California was especially at the forefront of this fight.

“The most racially and ethnically diverse generation of our time has shown up time and time again demanding that we do better,” Butler said, “whether it’s the movements for gun reform, environmental protection, racial justice or your local baristas’ fight to join a union.”

Butler, 44, shared her own history as the youngest of three children in her family from Magnolia, Mississippi, whose maternal grandparents were a sharecropper and a maid who worked to become a nursing assistant. Her mother was one of 11 children, born one year before the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education.

Butler’s father died when she was 15. The work Butler’s mother did, sometimes doing three jobs a day, as well as her professors at Jackson State University in Mississippi did for the civil rights movement shaped her view on activism.

Butler was most recently president of EMILYs List, an organization that works to get Democratic women who support abortion rights elected.

Butler started her speech by sharing her gratitude for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Butler in 2023 to take over Feinstein’s Senate term that ends in January 2025.

She is not running for a full six-year term in the Senate to start in January 2025.

As part of her tenure, Butler said she wants to work to pass legislation on voting rights, federal abortion protections, mental health care, fentanyl crackdowns and workers’ rights.

Present for Butler’s maiden speech were her wife and nine-year-old daughter, a group of California mayors and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., among others.

STATE LAWMAKER JOINS DLCC BOARD

Via Jenavieve Hatch...

State Sen. Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara, was elected to the board of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. The DLCC is a national committee of state lawmakers who organize and support Democratic legislative campaigns around the country.

Limón will be part of the effort to flip purple statehouses — like Arizona, New Hampshire and the Pennsylvania — blue. She will replace Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, who served on the DLCC board before stepping down last year.

While Congressional seats can be more difficult — and more costly — to flip, the DLCC focuses on making bigger gains at the local level.

“We always have to have a focus on states because of their ability to move faster in any direction,” Limón told Politico. “Over the last decade, we’ve really seen why it’s so important.”

Limón was elected to the Senate in 2020, and before that, to the California Assembly in 2016. She previously served on the Santa Barbara Unified School Board.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“There are many important debates happening about how to address climate change, but we should all be able to agree, at the very least, on community safety — especially when families and children are at risk.”

- Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert, in a statement announcing that his Ventura-based company is donating $500,000 to defend the 2022 law requiring that oil wells be 3,200 feet away from homes, schools, day care centers, parks, health care facilities and businesses from a referendum effort that seeks to repeal it.

Best of The Bee:

• A Yuba County elections worker was exposed Tuesday to fentanyl while opening mail, according to county officials, via Ishani Desai.

• A Democratic Assembly bill to ban young people from playing tackle football in California is dead, via Andrew Sheeler.

• California voters cannot go wrong in choosing any of the top three Democratic candidates hoping to replace the late U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Here’s our endorsement, via the McClatchy California Editorial Boards. (OPINION)