from The Epoch Times:
The bill also mandates ‘implicit bias training’ for existing medical professionals by June 1, 2025, and within six months for those opening new practices.
Some advocates for women’s rights are speaking out against a bill passed April 2 by the California Assembly’s Health Committee due to language in the measure that calls women “birthing persons.”
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
A prior bill, Assembly 241 passed in 2019, also mandated such training, but an investigation by the state’s attorney general’s office found many medical providers were not following the law.
Proponents argued the new bill is necessary to reduce black maternal and infant deaths—citing statistics that show significantly higher mortality rates for black women during birth compared to white women.
While acknowledging that mortality rates during birth for black women are a legitimate concern, opposition witnesses took exception to the language regarding transgender and non-binary individuals.
“They really pushed in the hearing that it was to fight the black maternal mortality rate,” Sophia Lorey, key opposition witness and outreach director for the California Family Council, told The Epoch Times after the hearing. “That is a portion of the bill, but they chose not to address that they call women ‘birthing people’ and that it’s also focused on non-binary people and transgender people, so that’s what we pushed in opposition.”
She argued during the hearing that the bill is “force-feeding medical lunacy.”
“We focused on the fact that only women can give birth, and it’s illogical to say anything different, and it’s not implicit bias to believe that only women can give birth,” Ms. Lorey said.
Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, chair of the health committee and wife of Mr. Bonta, the state’s attorney general, concluded the hearing by declaring that transgender men and non-binary people can give birth, a comment opponents rejected.
