Abortion in California is legal up to the point of fetal viability. An abortion ban was in place by 1900, and by 1950, it was a criminal offense for a woman to have an abortion. In 1962, the American Law Institute published their model penal code, as it applied to abortions, with three circumstances where they believed a physician could justifiably perform an abortion, and California adopted a version of this code. In 2002, the California State Legislature passed a law guaranteeing women the right to have an abortion "prior to viability of the fetus, or when the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman". In 2022, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1, which amended the Constitution of California to explicitly protect the right to abortion and contraception by a margin of 33.76%.
In response to crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) providing misleading and inaccurate information to pregnant women, the California Legislature passed the Reproductive FACT (Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency) Act (AB-755), which required CPCs to post visible notices that other options for pregnancy, including abortion, are available from state-sponsored clinics. It also mandated that unlicensed centers post notice of their unlicensed status. The centers, typically run by Christian non-profit groups, challenged the act on the basis that it violated their right free speech. The law was subsequently struck down as unconstitutional in a controversial 5-4 decision along ideological lines by the U.S. Supreme Court. California allows certain qualified non-physician health professionals, such as physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and certified nurse midwives, to do first-trimester aspiration abortions, and to prescribe drugs for medical abortions. There have been a number of abortion-related cases before the California Supreme Court, the California Courts of Appeal, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California since 1969.
There have been several deaths in California as a result of illegal abortions, including 35 in 1966 and 1967. California uses its own funds to cover all "medically necessary" abortions sought by low-income women under Medicaid. 88,466 were state-funded in 2010.
California has an active abortion rights activist community. Society for Human Abortion was founded in 1963 in San Francisco. People in California participated in #StopTheBans protested in May 2019, including at protests in San Francisco and Los Angeles. There is also an active anti-abortion rights community. Singer Pat Boone announced he recorded a song titled "Sixteen Thousand Faces" about the Los Angeles fetus disposal scandal in May 1985. The first Walk for Life was held on January 22, 2005. A number of acts of anti-abortion rights violence have also taken place in the state, including an attempted bombing in July 1987, fires at clinics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and acts of violence in San Francisco in February 1995, Modesto in March 2003, and Costa Mesa in March 2022.