Court Again Eases Abortion Restrictions

For the 10th year in a row, a state Court of Appeal on Friday overturned the Legislature’s tight restrictions on state-funded abortions for low-income women.

This time, however, a three-judge appellate panel cited broader grounds for the ruling--an action foes of the abortion curbs said would increase their chances of victory when the case reaches the new, more conservative state Supreme Court.

As it has in the past, the appeal court held that the restrictions violated the right to privacy and equal protection guarantees of the state Constitution. The state high court, under then-Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, upheld such a finding in 1981.

But in Friday’s decision, the appeal court found also that the strict limitations the Legislature included in the 1987 Budget Act violated a constitutional provision restricting any one state law to a “single-subject.”

Preventing Riders

The single-subject rule, in effect in California since 1849, among other things is aimed at preventing legislative riders to slip through the process undetected under the guise of unrelated legislation. Forty other states have enacted similar single-subject requirements under their constitutions.

The appeal court held that the Legislature had improperly used the Budget Act to try to prevent health officials from providing for abortions as they are required to do under the Medi-Cal Act, through which the state provides health services to the poor.

Ralph Santiago Abascal of California Rural Legal Assistance, one of the lawyers representing a coalition of legal groups that filed a suit challenging the abortion restrictions, said the new and broader ruling would be much more difficult for the state Supreme Court to overturn.

Vulnerable Position Seen

“A lot of people had speculated that because of the change in composition of the court, our position would be more vulnerable,” Abascal said. “But now we think there is a very good chance the court will sustain today’s ruling. The single-subject rule is not just a little technicality, but a fundamental part of the democratic process.”

Attorneys for the state officials defending the restrictions were unavailable for comment. A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, which represents the officials, said only the ruling would be “carefully reviewed.”

However, an appeal to the state Supreme Court seems a certainty. Last July, shortly after California Rural, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed suit in the appeal court to block the restrictions, state officials took the unusual step of asking the state high court to hear the case directly and uphold the limitations.

Return Expected

The justices declined to intercede, sending the dispute back to the Court of Appeal. Now, following Friday’s ruling, under regular court procedures it is probable that the case will be back before the Supreme Court by April.

Meanwhile, low-income women will continue to receive abortions under the Medi-Cal program under court order, as they have while the issue has been in dispute over the last decade. About 80,000 indigents receive such aid each year at a cost of about $13 million annually.

Every year since 1978, the Legislature has included restrictions on abortion in budget legislation. Its most recent restrictions barred Medi-Cal abortions except when a woman’s life was in danger, a pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or an unborn child was severely abnormal. The limitations would have eliminated funds for an estimated 90% of the abortions being performed, opponents said.

Implementation Blocked

Before the new restrictions could take effect, the appeal court blocked their implementation and ordered abortion funding to continue, pending a ruling on their validity.

Spirited arguments were heard in November before a three-judge panel, Appellate Justices J. Anthony Kline, Jerome A. Smith and John E. Benson. At one point, Kline assailed the 10-year legal merry-go-round as “an annual charade.”

The court ordered Kenneth W. Kizer, state director of health services and one of the defendants named in the suit, to “perform all ministerial duties” to continue funding abortions under the Medi-Cal program.