California has some of the nation’s strictest restrictions on interstate medical practice. With rare exceptions, the state requires that physicians who provide any form of treatment, care, or consultation to California patients must be licensed in California.
While other parts of the country are changing regulations to accommodate telemedicine, California prohibits out-of-state specialists from conducting remote follow-up appointments or consultations with California patients.
In an effort to reduce regulatory burdens, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 233 yesterday. The only catch is the doctor has to be from Arizona. And they can only provide abortion-related services. temporarily. To patients also from Arizona.
The law Newsom signed was in response to an Arizona Supreme Court decision in April that allowed the state’s longstanding, near-total abortion ban to return to effect following a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Arizona has since changed its abortion laws to make them more permissive. Newsom signed SB 233 too late to affect the immediate issues the bill was intended to address.
But that didn’t stop the governor from celebrating his victory.
“We refuse to stand by and acquiesce in their oppressive and dangerous attacks on women,” Newsom said in a statement about signing SB 233. “California is ready to protect reproductive freedoms.”
To pro-lifers (myself included), abortion is a legitimate subject subject to legal restrictions and prohibitions. This is the position held by many liberals in good standing. From an anti-abortion perspective, California’s actions to undermine another state’s abortion restrictions are in themselves reprehensible.
Even pro-lifers should be outraged by California’s extremely selective relaxation of restrictions on out-of-state doctors practicing medicine.
If a doctor licensed in Arizona can perform abortions in California, that doctor should also be able to provide other types of medical services. There is, of course, no legitimate health or safety reason for doctors to perform abortions, but not for less risky or invasive medical procedures.
Even if it did, it doesn’t explain why California’s new law applies only to Arizona doctors and patients. Does Oregon’s statute allowing abortion make it somehow impossible for doctors in Oregon to perform abortions in California?
Clearly, the purpose of California’s new law is just to prank Arizona Republican lawmakers.
People might tolerate California’s laws as trolls if they didn’t disrespect and deny Californians the ability to make health care choices in so many other ways.
yesterday, reason Reported on the case of Shellye Horowitz, who was forced to travel from her home in rural Northern California to Oregon just to have a phone call with a hemophilia specialist in Portland due to California’s telemedicine restrictions consult.
“This is my body and my health care. I should be able to choose to go to a provider that I trust. I don’t like my state restricting my ability to contact and follow up with the provider of my choice.” Horowitz said he is suing to overturn California’s restrictions on out-of-state medical comfort.
Against this backdrop, Newsom’s rhetoric about “reproductive freedom” and protecting women’s choices rings rather hollow. Only on the issue of abortion are he and California policymakers willing to respect an individual’s freedom to choose medical care.
The governor’s concerns about freedom and choice evaporate when it comes to the state’s raft of other restrictions on patients’ ability to choose their own health care.
