Abortion pill mandate for California universities vetoed by Brown

Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday vetoed a measure that would have required public university student health centers to provide abortion medication by no later than Jan. 1, 2022.

Brown noted in his veto message that “the average distance to abortion providers in campus communities varies from five to seven miles, not an unreasonable distance.”

“Because the services required by this bill are widely available off-campus, this bill is not necessary,” he wrote.

To pay for the cost of implementation, the bill would have required $9.6 million in private funding to provide a $200,000 grant to all public universities. It also would have provided a $200,000 grant to both the University of California and California State University systems to provide 24-hour telephone patient support for abortion medication recipients.

When the bill’s author, Connie Leyva, D-Chino, introduced the bill, she said that “a woman should always have the right to decide when she incorporates a family into her life.”

She vowed Sunday to reintroduce the proposal next session.

“As the Trump Administration continues to unravel many of the critical health care protections and services for women, legislation such as this is urgently needed to make sure that Californians are able to access the full range of reproductive care regardless of where they may live,” Leyva said in a statement.

This story was originally published September 30, 2018 at 5:28 PM.