SB 780 is likely to be voted on in the California Assembly this week.  Call your own Assemblyman, and if possible some of the key members listed below.

SB 780, by Senator Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento), targets pro-life people whose ministry is to pray outside of abortion clinics, or sidewalk-counsel prospective abortion patients.  It is a modification of Ortiz’s  “anti-abortion hate crimes” legislation of last year.  This version refers to anti-reproductive health care crimes.

SB 780 replicates provisions of the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances act (FACE) in state statute, and launches a "Reproductive Rights Law Enforcement Act," which is unnecessary, and a waste of law enforcement time and taxpayer money.  It requires that police and the attorney general ”profile" people "suspected of committing" certain crimes or suspected of making certain "threats."  Although the acts mentioned are already against the law, you can only violate THIS statute if you are pro-life.  The same crime committed by one who is pro-abortion would not be covered by this act.

SB 780 in fact provides protection for the so-called "assistants" who regularly intimidate and interfere with the lawful First Amendment activities undertaken by pro-life people. Pro-life people who pray at abortion clinics, or provide prospective abortion patients with information about alternatives, so that they can carry their babies to term, have endured every conceivable insult: from pushing and shoving to outright assault, from having their license plates photographed to having their cars damaged, from being hosed down to being shot with a pellet gun. Most recently, in Santa Cruz a man was arrested for punching and kicking pro-life demonstrators, and brandishing a knife and threatening to stab one of them. Although pro-life counseling agencies are also vandalized, they are not covered by SB 780.

SB 780 provides for restraining orders against videotaping at the abortion facilities, which, considering the problems just addressed, would place peaceful pro-life demonstrators in much greater jeopardy.

And to add insult to injury, the ACLU, CARAL, Planned Parenthood and other such abortion providers and advocates would be considered "subject matter experts," who would be eligible to write the telecourse for training law enforcement officers to implement this travesty.

Call or FAX your assemblyman, and those key members listed below.  We expect SB 780 to be taken up as soon as Wednesday, September 9.  Phone calls or faxes are much more likely to be read  than e-mails.  If you e-mail, put “Oppose SB 780” in the subject line.

Key Members of the Assembly 
Name (Party-District #), Phone number, FAX number, e-mail address: