Give It Up

The California Constitution guarantees the right of privacy. That right of privacy encompasses the decision to have an abortion. Years ago a compassionate California Legislature decided that the right was no right at all if women could not afford to exercise it, so it guaranteed payment for abortions for poor women under the Medi-Cal program. More recently the Legislature has become cowed by anti-abortion forces and has repeatedly tried to restrict the conditions under which the state may spend money on those abortions. By 1981 the California Supreme Court ruled the restrictions unconstitutional because they violated the right of privacy.

Still the Legislature has gone on imposing curbs. Finally, this year, state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp said that he could no longer defend those curbs in court.

Somehow these not-so-subtle messages have never penetrated the fine legislative minds that keep passing the restrictions. So once again--it’s 11 years in a row now--a state court has struck down the Legislature’s narrow-minded action. State officials must continue to provide full funding, the Court of Appeal has ruled. It added that the state budget legislation could not be used to change a separate law that provides for unrestricted Medi-Cal funding for abortions.

The latest limits would have allowed state money to pay for abortions only in several highly restrictive cases: when a mother’s life was in danger, when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, when the mother was under 18 and had told her parents of her decision to have an abortion, or when the unborn child would be severely abnormal. The lawyers who challenged these curbs said that, if they had been in effect, only about 10% of the 80,000 women who get such aid each year would remain eligible.

The attorney for the state Department of Health Services said that an appeal is under consideration. An appeal is totally unnecessary. The court said it clearly: The answer is no to what the state is trying to do and has tried to do for 11 years. Stop wasting money in court and start helping poor women instead of hindering their right to privacy.