SACRAMENTO, Calif. /California Newswire/ — Calif. Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today signed seven bills to support the health and well-being of women in California. The Governor signed numerous bills today, including AB 154 by Assemblymember Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) – Permits a nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife or physician assistant, who completes specified training and complies with specified standardized procedures or protocols, to perform an abortion by aspiration techniques during the first trimester of pregnancy.
• AB 219 by Assemblymember Henry T. Perea (D-Fresno) – Requires health care service plan contracts and health insurance policies issued on or after January 1, 2015, that cover prescribed, orally administered anti-cancer medications to limit an enrollee or insured’s total cost share to no more than $200 per filled prescription, as specified. A signing message can be found here.
• AB 980 by Assemblymember Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) – Requires the California Building Standards Commission, in conjunction with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, to repeal certain regulations and sections of the California Building Standards Code that treat primary clinics differently depending on whether the clinics provide abortion services.
• AB 1286 by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) – Ensures taxpayers can continue to support the California Breast Cancer Research Fund with the check of a box on their state income tax return, by suspending the annual adjustment of the minimum contribution level for this check-off in 2014 and 2015.
• AB 1308 by Assemblymember Susan Bonilla (D-Concord) – Authorizes a midwife to directly obtain supplies and devices, obtain and administer drugs and diagnostic tests, order testing and receive reports that are necessary to his/her practice of midwifery and consistent with his/her scope of practice; expands the disclosures required to be made by a midwife to a prospective client to include the specific procedures that warrant consultation with a physician and surgeon; and makes other correcting and conforming changes.
• SB 402 by Senator Kevin De León (D-Los Angeles) – Requires all general acute care hospitals and special hospitals, that have a perinatal unit by January 1, 2025, to adopt the “Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding,” as adopted by Baby-Friendly USA, per the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, or an alternate process adopted by a health care service plan that includes evidenced-based policies and practices and targeted outcomes, or the Model Hospital Policy Recommendations, as defined.
• SB 460 by Senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) – Requires the Department of Public Health to include prescribed information regarding environmental health in the California Prenatal Screening patient educational information, and to post that environmental health information on the Department’s website. This bill also requires the Department to send a notice to all distributors of the Prenatal Screening patient educational information that informs them of the change to that information, and encourages obstetrician-gynecologists and midwives to discuss environmental health with their patients.
For full text of the bills, visit: http://leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html.
