What nonsense!
Social media users have made false claims about a California bill about reproductive health.
www.latimes.com
CALIFORNIA
False claims about California abortion-related bill spread thousands of times on social media
The Twitter logo on a digital device
Disinformation about California’s AB 2223 has gone viral online. (Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
BY JUSTIN RAYSTAFF WRITER
MAY 5, 2022 6:30 AM PT
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Thursday, May 5. I’m Justin Ray.
As The Times has reported, California intends to become a haven for those seeking reproductive health care in America if the U.S. Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion overturning Roe vs. Wade becomes the law of the land. This may make the state a target, as it has been in the past for its progressive laws on immigration, the environment and other policy areas.
One way that people can attack the state is through misinformation and disinformation. A misinterpretation of a California bill has already gone viral online.
The misinformation appears to have originated from multiple questionable websites that published stories claiming that California bill AB 2223 legalizes infanticide. One site said it would “legalize the murder of children up to nine months gestation and in the week(s) after birth.”
The false claims have been posted and reshared thousands of times on Twitter with language such as, “California introduces bill to legalize infanticide before and after birth”; “Killing babies up to 28 days old!”; and “An abortion bill that will essentially legalize a form of infanticide.” (When asked for a response to the tweets, Twitter said the posts were “not found to be in violation of the Twitter Rules,” adding that “our misinformation policies apply to COVID-19, civic integrity and synthetic and manipulated media.”)
What does the bill actually do?
The bill, which you can read here, removes the requirement that a coroner has to investigate “deaths related to or following known or suspected self-induced or criminal abortion.” The bill prohibits using a coroner’s statements on the certificate of fetal death “to establish, bring, or support a criminal prosecution or civil cause of damages against any person.”
“Basically the whole point is we want to make sure that if you do experience a miscarriage, if you experience a stillbirth, if you experience a self-induced abortion, you have a self-induced abortion, that you are not criminally prosecuted for that,” said Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, the Democrat representing the East Bay and one of the bill’s sponsors. But it still allows authorities “to be able to investigate the facts of a newborn child’s death, including whether the child was born living and when and how the child died.”
She brought up two recent cases in the state that prompted the bill: Chelsea Becker, a Central Valley woman who was charged with murder after delivering a stillborn baby who tested positive for methamphetamine (a judge dismissed the charge last May); and Adora Perez, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “manslaughter of a fetus.” (The sentence was overturned in March.)
“Those are the types of things we’re trying to stop, especially when we now live in an era of ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ where, who knows what’s happening?” Wicks said. “You look at the examples of Chelsea and Adora in California in the year 2022. We actually do have to put in statutes to ensure that women are protected in these circumstances.”
The section that appears to have caused controversy states, “Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.”
The word “perinatal” seems to have sparked the misinformation. The section was amended on April 6 to read “perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.” Wicks says, “Anti-abortion activists are peddling an absurd and disingenuous argument that this bill is about killing newborns, when ironically, the part of the bill they’re pointing to is about protecting and supporting parents experiencing the grief of pregnancy loss.”
Wicks says this legislation is one of the ways the state is preparing to help women in America access reproductive care.
“What we will not do in California is sit back while the rest of the nation is experiencing what they’re experiencing,” Wicks said. “What we’re going to do is make sure that we’re ready for the 1.4 million women that we expect to come to California.”