Abortions Not Periled by Ballot Plan, Adviser to Legislature Finds

In a victory for Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, the Legislature’s nonpartisan legal adviser has concluded that the Crime Victims Reform Initiative sponsored by Wilson as part of his 1990 gubernatorial campaign does not endanger a woman’s right to abortion.

That concern was raised in July by Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, a Democratic candidate for governor, after the U.S. Supreme Court gave states more power to regulate abortion.

Van de Kamp argued that subordinating California’s constitutional right to privacy to the U.S. Constitution, as the crime initiative would do, might endanger a woman’s right to abortion because privacy, one of the underpinnings of California abortion rights, is not explicit in the federal document.

But the opinion this week by the legislative counsel of California lends support to Van de Kamp’s critics, including Wilson, who contend that the attorney general’s objection to the crime initiative is politically motivated.

“There is no indicia of intent in (the) language or anywhere else throughout the proposed initiative to affect existing procreative (privacy) rights presently recognized under Section 1 of Article I of the California Constitution,” wrote Deputy Legislative Counsel Maureen S. Dunn.

“Thus we are of the opinion that, if adopted, the proposed (initiative) would not affect the privacy rights of women who obtain abortions in California.”

There was some small vindication for Van de Kamp in the legislative counsel’s opinion.

“However,” said Dunn in her final paragraph, “the matter is not free from doubt and, in the final analysis, the courts may look to ballot arguments and analyses to make a final determination.”

Backed by former federal judge Shirley Hufstedler and by some legal scholars at UC Berkeley, USC and Harvard University, Van de Kamp argues that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services decision may portend the eventual reversal of the high court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationally.

Thus, Van de Kamp says, the crime initiative creates more risk than he is comfortable with that California women might lose the protection now afforded by the state’s Constitution.

The attorney general said Thursday: “The (legislative counsel’s) opinion does not deal with the question of what would happen to California women’s reproductive rights if the U.S. Supreme Court reverses Roe vs. Wade.”

Wilson, who is pro-choice on abortion, insisted that he would not have agreed to be the chief fund raiser for the crime initiative if it endangered the right to abortion.

Bob Wickers, campaign manager for the crime victims initiative, immediately put pressure on Van de Kamp Thursday to help write a ballot argument for the initiative.

“Van de Kamp should join us and draft a ballot statement” that explicitly exempts abortion from the crime initiative’s reduction of privacy in search-and-seizure cases.

But Van de Kamp, believing that more than a ballot argument is needed to guide future courts, has proposed his own crime initiative for the November, 1990, ballot, one encompassing Wilson’s measure with a couple of changes to explicitly state that abortion would not be affected.

The senator’s advisers have charged that Van de Kamp raised the fear about the initiative’s threat to abortion as a way to upstage former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein with liberal voters.

Feinstein led Van de Kamp in early polls on the Democratic governor’s race, but the attorney general moved ahead of her in the latest Los Angeles Times Poll.

Unlike Van de Kamp, Feinstein favors capital punishment, and she endorsed the crime initiative--which would make it easier for prosecutors to seek the death penalty--a week before the attorney general raised the alarm about abortion rights. His concern gave her second thoughts for a while.

But Feinstein spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said Thursday that after talking to a number of legal experts and reading the legislative counsel’s opinion, the former mayor is not persuaded that the initiative presents a threat to legal abortion in California.