Sacramento, California - California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, alongside 15 Attorneys General, Thursday filed an amicus brief in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the plaintiff in Hopkins v. Jegley, a lawsuit that seeks to protect a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion care.

“Lawmakers should stop interfering with and instead increase access to affordable healthcare for all women,” said Attorney General Becerra. “No woman should be blocked from making the private health decisions that she is entitled to under the Constitution. I am proud to stand with my fellow Attorneys General in fighting to ensure women have access to the reproductive healthcare they seek.”

In 2017, the Arkansas state legislature passed four laws intended to restrict access to abortion services. The laws would criminalize the most common form of second trimester abortion, require notice to a woman’s sexual partner—or to their parents, if both are minors—and impose other undue burdens on women’s constitutional right to abortion. The law would make abortion care unavailable and less safe for women.

On July 28, 2017, the U.S. District Court granted the plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction, which temporarily blocked the Arkansas laws restricting abortion care. Arkansas appealed the decision shortly after.

In filing today’s brief, Attorney General Becerra joins the Attorneys General of New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia.