Too extreme for Newsom? California sanctuary bill for abortion, transgender procedures vetoed

Louisiana's legal challenge to the Food and Drug Administration's prescribing conditions for an abortion pill is partly predicated on shield laws in blue states, especially New York and California that prevent lawsuits and prosecutions against doctors for prescribing mail-order mifepristone to out-of-state customers who can't legally get an abortion.

While the Pelican State's recent argument before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn't go well -- the Supreme Court twice blocked mifepristone pauses by the appeals court -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom used his veto pen to make out-of-state prosecutions theoretically possible for both "reproductive health care services" and "gender affirming health care services."

The term-limited Democrat with presidential ambitions, who recently said he won't run if fellow Californian and former Democratic nominee Kamala Harris enters the 2028 presidential race, vetoed legislation (AB 2164) to codify an extradition ban for "legally protected health care activity" in California, claiming it infringed executive authority.

The surprise move thrilled opponents of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical removals of healthy breasts and genitals, including disaffected Democrats and pediatric gender clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed. It also unexpectedly whipsawed abortion activists and bill supporters. (Just the News could not find any response from pro-life organizations.)

"A rare win in California!" state-based advocacy group Women Are Real crowed, touting the combined opposition of Reed's LGB Courage Coalition, California Family Council, Californians United for Sex-Based Evidence in Policy and Law, Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender and gender-critical parents group Our Duty.

Women Are Real noted two related bills still awaiting action from Newsom, both sponsored by his attorney general Rob Bonta, with a Sept. 30 deadline.

AB 1954 would prohibit a "broad range of businesses and individuals from complying with out-of-state legal demands for protected information," create a notification process so the AG can "intervene and stop improper disclosures" and prevent arrests if the governor refuses extradition, Bonta said, noting Newsom's January refusal to Louisiana.

AB 1930 would require California businesses to notify the AG "if they intend to respond to a subpoena or inquiry regarding legally protected health care activity" and authorize the AG to intervene to stop disclosure.

"A high-brow, academic justification for refusing to codify legal protections only reveals an ignorance for the lived reality of patients and providers," Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine legal director Lizzy Hinkley responded to the veto, the liberal magazine Mother Jones argued. 

Abortion providers are "just one election away from extradition," Reproductive Freedom for All director of state campaigns Pavitra Abraham said, not pacified by former California AG Xavier Becerra's growing lead over Republican Steve Hilton in the governor's race or that Hilton walked back his primary promise to extradite a California abortion doc to Louisiana.

While Newsom worked hand in glove with the Democrat-controlled Legislature to push the boundaries of abortion in the wake of SCOTUS yanking federal abortion rights — even eliminating coroner investigations of stillbirths and prosecutions for self-induced abortions — he has pulled back on some cultural flashpoints as tests of the strength of his national appeal.

He unexpectedly agreed with the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk that letting males in female sports was "deeply unfair" and recently conceded, while fishing with CNN's Jake Tapper in Montana, that some of California's COVID-19 policies were wrongheaded. Closing beaches was "insane" and his lockdown visit to the French Laundry was "boneheaded."

After this latest veto, LGBTQ Nation grumbled about Newsom's comity with Kirk and his veto of a bill last year, based on cost concerns, to compel insurers to pay for a year of hormone therapy for transgender patients and pharmacists to prescribe it.

Veto message studiously avoids the subjects of the bill

The governor buried the veto of the sanctuary-state codification in his "legislative update" Sunday, mentioning dozens of bills, both signed and vetoed, which even obscured AB 2164's subject matter behind the anodyne description "legally protected activities."

Newsom's veto message says he's "proud" of his work with the Legislature to expand "the right of access to health care in this state," rattling off several bills he signed yet still not specifying the subjects of the bill he vetoed, abortion and medicalized gender transitions.

But because "extradition is an exclusively executive function" and "discretion is appropriately placed with the Governor," Newsom fears the precedent if he "agreed with the Legislature to erode the executive authority of an incoming Governor based on their shared policy preferences, regardless of how righteous and well-intended those actions may be."

Gender clinic whistleblower Reed, whose transgender ex-spouse publicly detransitioned from 13 years living as a man due to health problems from testosterone supplements and "emotional consequences" of transition, testified in person against the bill this spring, citing California's credulity toward pediatric gender medicine.

"Every single systematic review of the evidence" for the field has found the "evidence base is insufficient," she said, noting a massive Finnish study that found "psychiatric morbidity" jumped after youth medical transition. The same study went viral again last week when Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and Donald Trump Jr. shared an Australian activist's post about it.

Reed asked lawmakers to question why the sponsor "tied up" gender medicine with abortion, an increasingly common arrangement in blue states under their shared connection to the reproductive system and Planned Parenthood. "You are harming future homosexuals" and "gender nonconforming children" by ignoring the evidence about medical transition.

Women Are Real called the vetoed bill "the latest brick in the wall that the CA Dems are trying to build to shield doctors that remove girls’ healthy breasts, chemically castrate kids and damage endocrine systems," after Newsom signed laws to make California a sanctuary state for pediatric gender transitions and shield transgender medical data.

The final bill analysis notes it would simply codify Newsom's 2022 executive order but acknowledges it "potentially implicates the Full Faith and Credit Clause," referring to an earlier Senate Judiciary Committee analysis that went hunting for exceptions to SCOTUS precedent requiring states to enforce each other's judicial determinations.

An opposition statement from Californians United for Sex-Based Evidence in Policy and Law appears in the final bill analysis.

It asked lawmakers not to "extend legal cover to those who may bear direct responsibility" for "psychologically harmful, medically unnecessary, function destroying and irreversible psychiatric and medical interventions" in service of the falsehoods that sex can be changed and "such interventions are needed to alleviate mental health disorders."