When Abortion Is Free…But Life Isn’t.

Over a century ago, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger declared that certain people—the poor, the disabled, and those she derisively called “human weeds”—should be discouraged from having children.

She called them “unfit.”
She called it “birth control.”
But let’s call it what it really was: eugenics.

And California was not just complicit in this ideology—it led the way. Beginning in 1909, the state ran the largest forced sterilization program in the nation, targeting poor women, immigrants, minorities, and the disabled. By 1921, California was responsible for nearly 80% of all sterilizations in the U.S.—a program so influential it helped inspire Nazi Germany’s sterilization laws.*

That dark history has not disappeared—it has simply been repackaged. Today’s lawmakers advance policies that devalue human life under the banner of “equity.” One of the most recent, SB 245—the so-called Abortion Accessibility Act—is nothing more than eugenics with a smile. 

Unlike the crude sterilization programs of the past, today’s eugenics is more subtle—operating through selective financial incentives, cultural pressure, and medical framing. Scholars and ethicists call this the “new eugenics” or “liberal eugenics”: policies and practices that steer vulnerable populations away from reproduction, cloaked in the language of choice and equity. For example:

• Doctors urging parents to abort children with Down syndrome or other fetal anomalies.
• Women being offered free abortions rather than support in raising children.
• Fertility clinics promoting embryo selection to weed out “undesirable” traits while marketing it as empowerment.

The effect is the same as before: vulnerable communities bear the brunt of policies that quietly declare some lives less worth living. Even worse, those very communities are being conscripted to advance the same ideology bent on eliminating their children—and, ultimately, their future.

Just as past sterilization laws masked coercion under the guise of “progress,” SB 245 veils its discrimination in the language of “access” and “equity.”

The law eliminates all out-of-pocket costs for abortion—no co-pays, no deductibles—while offering nothing to mothers who choose life.

That’s not health equity.
That’s not freedom.
That’s coercion through policy design—and it strikes the most vulnerable women the hardest.

SB 245 sends a chilling message: if you want to end your child’s life, California will pay. If you want to carry your child to term? You’re on your own.

Life Legal is fighting back. We filed a lawsuit to challenge SB 245’s blatant discrimination and have been in litigation for over two years. I won’t sugarcoat it—this is an uphill battle. Our opponent, the State of California—led by Attorney General Rob Bonta and backed by multiple state agencies—has virtually unlimited resources. But this case is critical. We are demanding that California answer for its bias against mothers and children. Each motion we file and every argument we present underscores the constitutional flaws in this policy and the discriminatory framework that sustains it.

And make no mistake: this is not just a California problem. If we can overturn SB 245, it will block similar laws from taking root in other states—and could change the trajectory of abortion legislation nationwide.

A century ago, California’s sterilization program was celebrated as “progress.” History has rightly condemned it as barbaric. SB 245—and the larger movement it represents—deserves the same judgment.

The measure of a just society is how it treats the weakest among us. That is why we are fighting: to protect unborn children, to defend their mothers, and to insist on a future where every life is valued and every child welcomed.

*The leaders in the German sterilization movement state repeatedly that their legislation was formulated only after careful study of the California experiment as reported by Mr. Gosney and Dr. Popenoe. It would have been impossible, they say, to undertake such a venture involving some 1 million people without drawing heavily upon previous experience elsewhere. (The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism, pp 42-43)