(CN) — In a reaction against Texas’s recent assault on abortion rights, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills into law on Wednesday, one which will protect patient privacy and the other that seeks to criminalize online threats to abortion doctors and prospective patients.
“These bills take on a whole new meaning given what just happened in Texas,” Newsom said during the virtual signing ceremony on Zoom Wednesday afternoon. “It is of outsized importance that California asserts itself as the opposite of these states, states like Texas.”
Assembly Bill 1184, authored by David Chiu, will require health insurance companies to protect the privacy of individuals accessing sensitive health care issues.
“At this time when a patient is on someone else’s health insurance, such as a parent or a spouse, there has unfortunately been a real risk that insurance companies will share communications about sensitive health services such as reproductive care, gender-affirming care, substance abuse care and mental health care to the policyholder rather than the patient,” said Chiu.
The lawmaker said young people attempting to access these services deserve privacy.
Republicans and abortion opponents have criticized the law saying it is effectively an end around the decision-making autonomy of parents, allowing them to pay for procedures and services they don’t know about and may oppose.
“Already, state law gives minors the ability to consent to a variety of medical and psychological services while keeping parents in the dark, depriving parents of the ability to fully care for children who they may not know are in crisis,” said Matthew Reynolds, an attorney with the Pacific Justice Center for Public Policy. “Expanding the state-sponsored deception and reducing transparency only adds insult to injury.”
But Chiu argued that domestic violence victims, for instance, are endangered when their spouses are alerted to the fact they are receiving care and that transgender youth have the right to seek medical care when thwarted by their parents.
Newsom did not talk much about the specifics of AB 1184 or the other bill, AB 1356, instead focusing on the need to signal California’s efforts to stand up for reproductive health given the recent Supreme Court decision to allow Texas to ban abortions after six weeks.
The high court will also hear a case later this fall about new abortion restrictions in the state of Mississippi.
“These are dark times,” Newsom said. “We are reaffirming the constitutionally protected rights of women to have these safe and accessible sexual and reproductive healthcare that they deserve.”
AB 1356 criminalizes online threats to abortion doctors and patients prospective or otherwise and establishes a buffer zone around abortion clinics to prevent protesters from potentially harassing women looking to access reproductive care.
The law could present First Amendment challenges, although courts have traditionally treated threats as a different category of speech then criticism or even harassment.
Republican lawmakers in the state have not appeared overeager to criticize the law as it has made its way through committees.
Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahn, author of AB 1356, said “it will protect our patients and our reproductive workers at the clinic doors.”
The lawmaker said, “extremists groups show up in California all the time.”
“They threaten our patients and our providers and they ensure that some patients don’t receive the care that they’re there to receive,” Bauer-Kahn wrote.
Newsom has about 800 bills sitting on his desk as he was loath to sign anything in the weeks leading up to the recall election that he ended up trouncing soundly in a landslide. Newsom said he will “work his way” through the pile of bills awaiting his signature or a veto.
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