Planned Parenthood sues California city to build center after state puts abortion in its constitution

Planned Parenthood is suing a California city to force the local government to allow it to build an abortion clinic there, citing the state’s new “constitutional right” to the procedure.

The move from the abortion provider and activism organization comes as the city of Fontana in San Bernardino County passed a September “urgency ordinance” blocking new construction in the city center for 10 months.

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The Fontana lawsuit could set a precedent for the extent of legal authority provided by state ballot initiatives aimed at expanding the scope of legal abortion, a movement taking hold across the country in an effort to usurp legislative action restricting the procedure.

“California is an example of the abortion industry’s endgame with ballot measures,” Kelsey Pritchard, SBA Pro-Life America director of state public affairs, told the Washington Examiner. “When a right for unlimited abortion is added to a state’s constitution, Planned Parenthood can increase their financial gains by suing to eliminate all health regulations, end parental rights, and build new abortion facilities anytime, anywhere regardless of the will of the people in their own neighborhoods.”

Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties filed a complaint Monday alleging the move was a deliberate effort to block the construction of an abortion clinic.

“We did not want to be among the first organizations to file a lawsuit alleging violation of Californians’ constitutional rights under Proposition 1,” the Planned Parenthood regional president and CEO, Jon Dunn, said in a statement. “However, we have chosen to defend the rights of our community members against the city of Fontana, due to their deliberate actions to actively deny their community access to healthcare services.”

The abortion provider claimed it received “verbal approval” from the city’s director of planning less than two weeks before city leaders imposed a temporary pause on construction in the area where Planned Parenthood had applied to build its clinic. Planned Parenthood claimed the move to block construction was “not motivated by concern for the health of their citizens, but instead by political pressure from a small, vocal, out-of-touch special interest group that has spread misinformation and pressured City Council members into making policy based on ideology, not facts.”

Voters in the Golden State approved Proposition 1 last year, enshrining legal access to abortion, potentially up until the moment of birth, in the state constitution. Before the measure’s passage, California had a state law on the books that permitted abortions until the so-called age of viability, which doctors typically place around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

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Whether the constitutional amendment’s sweeping language about “reproductive freedom” will now extend abortion access into the later months of pregnancy remains unclear. Opponents of the proposition had argued the change would lay the groundwork for supporters of legal abortion to strip away any existing restrictions to the procedure.

More such initiatives are planned to be on ballots in 2024 in Maryland, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and Colorado.