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Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Wednesday he would go to court to challenge an amendment in the newly signed federal spending law that would cut off federal funds to states that enforce abortion-rights laws against unwilling hospitals, clinics and insurers.
"This is an unacceptable attack on women’s rights and state sovereignty, and a backdoor attempt to overturn Roe vs. Wade,’’ the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, Lockyer said in a statement.
The amendment, a last-minute addition to the $388 billion spending bill signed by President Bush on Wednesday, denies a wide range of federal funding to states that discriminate against any health facility, health maintenance organization or insurer that does not provide abortions or abortion referrals.
Lockyer said the amendment would affect California more than other states because the state has strong abortion-rights laws and a constitutional right to privacy, which requires the state to remain neutral between childbirth and abortion, and to pay for poor women’s abortions under Medi-Cal.
For example, he said, California requires every hospital – including those that refuse to provide elective abortions – to perform an abortion if childbirth would endanger the woman’s life. Under the new amendment, the state would forfeit federal funds if it penalized a hospital for violating that law, he said.
Courts have given Congress leeway to impose conditions on states’ use of federal funds. But Lockyer said his suit, to be filed in federal court within a few weeks, will argue that the amendment is so coercive – withdrawing indispensable funds for programs unrelated to abortion – that it exceeds congressional power and violates state sovereignty.
An abortion opponent accused Lockyer of "grandstanding for points with pro-abortion pressure groups.’’
"We think the courts are going to uphold the right of Congress to set these sorts of anti-discrimination conditions,’’ said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee. A decade ago, he said, some states raised similar objections when Congress broadened federal Medicaid funding of abortions to include pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, but courts ruled against the states.
Lockyer’s announcement drew praise from California abortion-rights advocates, who said the amendment would affect many state laws.
"It confers a broad federal right to disregard laws that protect access to abortion information and services,’’ said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Margaret Crosby, who won the 1981 ruling on Medi-Cal abortions.
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/09/BAGJJA8Q1O1.DTL
"This is an unacceptable attack on women’s rights and state sovereignty, and a backdoor attempt to overturn Roe vs. Wade,’’ the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, Lockyer said in a statement.
The amendment, a last-minute addition to the $388 billion spending bill signed by President Bush on Wednesday, denies a wide range of federal funding to states that discriminate against any health facility, health maintenance organization or insurer that does not provide abortions or abortion referrals.
Lockyer said the amendment would affect California more than other states because the state has strong abortion-rights laws and a constitutional right to privacy, which requires the state to remain neutral between childbirth and abortion, and to pay for poor women’s abortions under Medi-Cal.
For example, he said, California requires every hospital – including those that refuse to provide elective abortions – to perform an abortion if childbirth would endanger the woman’s life. Under the new amendment, the state would forfeit federal funds if it penalized a hospital for violating that law, he said.
Courts have given Congress leeway to impose conditions on states’ use of federal funds. But Lockyer said his suit, to be filed in federal court within a few weeks, will argue that the amendment is so coercive – withdrawing indispensable funds for programs unrelated to abortion – that it exceeds congressional power and violates state sovereignty.
An abortion opponent accused Lockyer of "grandstanding for points with pro-abortion pressure groups.’’
"We think the courts are going to uphold the right of Congress to set these sorts of anti-discrimination conditions,’’ said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee. A decade ago, he said, some states raised similar objections when Congress broadened federal Medicaid funding of abortions to include pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, but courts ruled against the states.
Lockyer’s announcement drew praise from California abortion-rights advocates, who said the amendment would affect many state laws.
"It confers a broad federal right to disregard laws that protect access to abortion information and services,’’ said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Margaret Crosby, who won the 1981 ruling on Medi-Cal abortions.
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/09/BAGJJA8Q1O1.DTL