The Governor of California (United States), Gavin Newsom, signed AB-260 into law on September 26, which allows prescribing and dispensing abortion pills without identifying the patient, the prescribing doctor, or the pharmacy delivering the drug. The regulation, effective immediately, shields doctors and pharmacists from legal sanctions and prohibits sharing information with authorities from other states where abortion is restricted. This is an unprecedented step even in the United States, consolidating California as the most radical state in promoting abortion.
An abortion without a face or responsibility
AB-260 turns chemical abortion into a depersonalized process, without control or responsibility. Instead of ensuring safety for women, the law hides the identity of those involved and turns a «controlled medical act» into an administrative procedure without guarantees. Experts warn that anonymity prevents accountability in cases of serious complications, which are not uncommon in chemical abortions. Bioethicist Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk warned that this measure reduces so-called «informed choice» to a legal fiction, endangering both women’s health and the right to know the truth about what is being administered.
Risk of abuse and exploitation
The criticism is not limited to the lack of medical safety. Pro-life organizations like Students for Life of America denounce that legal opacity facilitates the exploitation of vulnerable women. In contexts of domestic violence or human trafficking, anonymous abortion can be used as a tool of control, eliminating any trace of those responsible. Under the pretext of protecting women, the law opens the door to a state-legitimized clandestine market, where the life of the unborn child is destroyed without anyone assuming moral or legal responsibility.
California and Spain: two sides of the same agenda
What happened in California finds an unsettling parallel with the recent proposals of Pedro Sánchez’s Government in Spain, which has made abortion the axis of its social agenda. The reform of the 2010 law, approved in 2023, eliminated the parental consent requirement for 16- and 17-year-olds and consolidated abortion practice as a «right» guaranteed within the national health system. Additionally, the Executive has promoted initiatives to legally shield abortion clinics, even announcing its protection at the constitutional level.
Although the Spanish legal framework still requires identification of doctors and patients, the underlying logic is the same as in California: reducing abortion to a consumer service, disconnected from all moral responsibility and devoid of real guarantees for women. Both cases show how the dominant ideology seeks to impose abortion not only as legal, but as unquestionable, surrounding it with measures that obscure the truth, silence objectors, and eliminate any trace of social control.
The extension of the culture of death
California, with AB-260, offers an extreme image of what it means to normalize abortion as public policy: depersonalizing it, shielding it from criticism, and making it invisible to justice. Spain, for its part, advances in the same direction, under a language of «rights» that conceals the destruction of innocent human lives. In both contexts, the logic is identical: abortion is not presented as a drama, but as an administrative or pharmacological procedure stripped of all humanity.