This Friday, the governor Gavin Newsom granted a posthumous pardon to Laura Miner, a courageous reproductive health care provider in California from 1934 to 1948 who dedicated her career to providing safe and accessible elective abortions at a time when punitive restrictions forced women to seek unregulated and often medically risky abortions.
Miner was respected in the medical community as a highly skilled practitioner and cared for patients in need.
In 1949, Miner was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison on felony charges of abortion and conspiracy to commit abortions.
“In California, we will never return to a time when women were forced to seek basic medical care in back rooms and underground clinics,” Newsom said.
“Laura Miner’s story is a powerful reminder of the generations of people who fought for reproductive freedom in this country and the risks so many Americans now face in a post-Roe world. Miner paid a price for taking a stand, and today we are taking a step to right this injustice and reaffirm California’s commitment to uphold the hard-won progress made by countless advocates and health care providers over decades,” she stressed.
For her part, the governor's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, pointed out that this pardon is a reaffirmation of California's commitment to defend reproductive rights and protect those who seek or provide abortion services.
“As a woman and a mother, I am so grateful for Laura Miner’s courage and dedication to providing women with safe reproductive care in the face of tremendous personal risk. Now, more than 70 years after Ms. Miner was wrongfully convicted, we must channel her strength and determination as we fight to protect and ensure in the U.S. a woman’s basic right to make decisions about her own body and her future,” she said.
For Senate President Pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, “Laura Miner was a hero ahead of her time who willingly gave up her own freedom to save countless women, women who risked everything to make their own health care decisions and, in a very basic sense, choose their own futures.”
In that regard, she stressed that “Laura’s bravery deserved to be praised, not prosecuted, and I am grateful that we have evolved enough to be able to forgive her today. Laura’s story of subversive care eerily foreshadows what we may see when courts and legislatures across the country roll back our reproductive rights. We remember her and the generations of women who had no choice but to seek care in the shadows, as we continue the work to ensure that California is a beacon of reproductive justice and access for all.”
Notably, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Governor Newsom and the Legislature took steps to advance reproductive freedom with new measures to further protect patients and providers from legal retaliation, assist women in other states seeking abortion services, and expand reproductive health care access and affordability.
In turn, legislative measures have been signed to ensure that pregnancy loss is not criminalized, safeguard the privacy of medical records, and prohibit law enforcement and corporations from cooperating with entities from other states regarding legal abortions in California, among many other actions.
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