When Gov. Gavin Newsom, utilizing his executive power, refused to extradite a doctor accused of prescribing and mailing abortion capsules to a Louisiana girl, he mentioned California would “not ever” enable “extremist politicians” to punish its docs.
Newsom, who’s contemplating a run for president, has lengthy championed reproductive rights, however state lawmakers within the Democratically managed California legislature know future governors won’t have the identical political opinions.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host endorsed by President Donald Trump, has vowed to honor these kind of extradition requests from different states if he’s elected, saying that Louisiana “is trying to uphold what its people voted for, and California is undermining it.” His opponent, Democrat Xavier Becerra, has mentioned he would deny the requests.
Legislation advancing in Sacramento is the newest chapter in a tit for tat that’s been taking place between conservative and liberal states since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal authorized protections for abortion.
A bill by state Assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, which is being heard in committee, would take some choices out of the governor’s arms, requiring governors to disclaim extradition requests for healthcare suppliers who prescribe abortion remedy or administer gender-affirming care. It would additionally defend anybody in California who helped sufferers journey to California or one other state to obtain authorized care. While opponents solid “shield laws” as an incursion on different states’ authority, supporters of the invoice view it as insurance coverage — even with Becerra main Hilton 52% to 31%, based on May polling by the University of California-Berkeley Institute of Government Studies.
Newsom spokesperson Marissa Saldivar mentioned the governor doesn’t touch upon pending laws. Hilton and Becerra didn’t return requires remark.
“Protecting providers from prosecution should not rely on shifting political winds or a single person’s decision,” mentioned Alyssa Sherer, a nurse practitioner who spoke in help of the invoice at a Senate committee listening to in June. Sherer can also be the medical director at Hey Jane, a telehealth remedy abortion supplier.
Thirteen states have banned abortion outright, and 28 different states ban abortion someplace between six weeks and viability. At the identical time, different states that enable abortion have enacted defend legal guidelines to guard docs and nurses from legal responsibility after they prescribe throughout state strains.
People dwelling in states with whole abortion bans are more and more getting abortion capsules prescribed by way of telehealth, from 74,000 abortions in 2024 to 92,000 abortions in 2025, based on the Guttmacher Institute, citing numbers from its Monthly Abortion Provision Study.
Critics of defend legal guidelines say that states have a reputable curiosity in imposing their very own statutes and that such legal guidelines signify an try by some states, like California, to nullify the authorized choices of others.
“If California says, ‘We’re not going to honor any other state’s laws. We’re going to ship abortion pills into your states. You can’t have a law that says abortion is illegal,’ I don’t know — that doesn’t seem like a workable situation,” mentioned Greg Burt, who’s vp of the California Family Council and has spoken in opposition to defend legal guidelines on the State Capitol.
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Twenty-one different states and Washington, D.C., have comparable defend legal guidelines, however Arizona, California, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania’s depend on an govt order, which may very well be reversed by a successor, based on the Guttmacher Institute.
Amanda Barrow, a senior employees legal professional on the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at UCLA Law, mentioned passing extradition protections would put California on firmer footing, as a result of an govt order “could be revoked by a governor who is anti-abortion or anti-gender-affirming-care.”
Hilton has mentioned he would just do that if elected.
“Just as I wouldn’t want to see Louisiana coming in and undermining something that we voted for here in California,” the GOP candidate advised KQED in January.
During a May gubernatorial debate, Becerra mentioned he was strident about defending reproductive rights because the state’s legal professional basic. “Absolutely no,” Becerra mentioned of permitting California physicians to be extradited.
This yr, Hawai‘i added gender-affirming care to its existing shield laws. And Oregon expanded extradition protections, including banning law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state or federal investigations into care that’s authorized within the state.
But Republican legislators in conservative states have solid telehealth visits as an finish run round their legal guidelines. And some have moved to limit abortion tablet entry.
The governors of Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Dakota have signed payments this yr that criminalize the sale, buy, or distribution of remedy that induces an abortion. Those states make it a felony to offer remedy abortion medicine to people who find themselves looking for to finish a being pregnant. The legal guidelines impose as much as 10 years in jail with doubtlessly tens of hundreds of {dollars} in fines.
Mississippi amended the state’s managed substances code so as to add abortion capsules as a legal class. Although the state already prohibits abortion broadly, the measure particularly addresses distribution, which may topic out-of-state suppliers to prosecution.
In January, Louisiana tried to extradite a California physician, Remy Coeytaux, accused of mailing abortion capsules to a affected person. Newsom denied the request. Likewise, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul denied Louisiana’s February 2025 extradition request for a doctor in her state.
Texas has taken a barely completely different authorized tact. Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican working for the U.S. Senate, obtained a default judgment of greater than $100,000 in opposition to the New York physician focused by Louisiana, however a judge dismissed it, citing New York’s defend regulation. Neither Paxton nor Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill responded to requests for remark.
Fear of being charged with a criminal offense for offering high quality medical care is contributing to physicians leaving drugs, mentioned Sacramento emergency room physician Kamara Graham, who’s vp of the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which is supporting the invoice.
“It’s really conflicting and hard for us to weigh that concern of: Will I get extradited and charged and potentially be taken away from my family? Or do I do the right thing for my patient?” Graham mentioned.
The availability of remedy utilized in most abortions may quickly change nationwide. Under the management of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration recently confirmed it’s conducting a security assessment of mifepristone, certainly one of two medicines in tablet kind that’s utilized in most U.S. abortions. The FDA maintains the drug is protected and efficient.
If the FDA had been to determine that mifepristone shouldn’t be protected, such a ruling would supersede state legal guidelines, even in states the place abortion is authorized. If mifepristone is restricted, many telehealth teams have mentioned they would switch to utilizing solely the opposite remedy, misoprostol.
“The elephant in the room is whether the Trump administration, particularly after the midterms, makes some kind of move to put national limits on access to abortions,” mentioned Mary Ziegler, a regulation professor at UC-Davis who has written a number of books on reproductive well being regulation.
“Not everything is something that the legislature can solve for,” Ziegler mentioned, “because there’s some uncertainty about how the federal courts are going to react to all of this.”