Roe v. Wade: California to scale abortion care, preparing to assist women from out of state

California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis says the state will be scaling abortion care for women across the U.S. following Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to set aside $20M in the state budget over the next three years for it. Kounalakis joins Yahoo Finance on June 27, 2022 and talks Roe v. Wade, how the state plans to scale and its expectation of increased out-of-state patients.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: We did hear Governor Newsom talk about setting aside $20 million in the state budget over the next three years to specifically help women travel to California and pay for necessary abortions.

ELENI KOUNALAKIS: So we are the largest state in terms of population. We are a state of 40 million people, and we are the fifth largest economy in the world. We have the infrastructure. These funds are going to go to scale it up, and here at select USA there are companies and investors looking at foreign direct investment into the United States from around the world because we believe in basic human rights. A basic human right is women having control over our bodies.

Companies across the United States which are telling their employees that if they need access to care, they will get that assistance from their companies. So when we're already seeing this kind of mobilization, well where are those where are those women going to go? They're going to come to states like California.

So we are preparing the way to expand our capacity for women from other states to access care. And we're also building a website so that women figure out, if I need to go to California, how do I get there? What can I do? What kind of assistance? What kind of programs? What kind of philanthropic assistance exist? And then we're also building the legal infrastructure that will also help protect women who come to California.