Pro-life protesters rally at California state Capitol for 'Oppose Infanticide' demonstration against abortion

A pro-life rally gathered around the California state Capitol building on Tuesday to protest against a controversial bill that had many believing the state's lawmakers wanted to legalize killing babies even up to a week after birth.

The demonstration happened as originally planned even though legislators have since reacted, by changing the bill's language to clarify its intentions to protect parents from criminal charges if their baby dies during delivery.

It was called "Stop A.B. 2223 CA Lobby Day" and three separate pro-life groups within the state backed the event.  Despite the focus on terminology, critics of the bill remained concerned about the contents of the measure, itself.

"Hundreds of Pro Life protesters gather in front of the CA Capitol Building for the 'Oppose Infanticide' protest to lobby against legislation that would make infanticide legal in CA," wrote Drew Hernandez on Tuesday afternoon.

It was earlier in April when the California Assembly passed a bill that originally said: "Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death."

But a spokesperson for Assembly Member Wicks, who introduced the bill, spoke to Reuters saying that amendments to the bill would be added to clarify the language surrounding the phrase "perinatal deaths." They changed it to "pregnancy-related cause" instead; (they also changed usage of the term "woman" to "pregnant person.")

In layman's terms, investigators are reportedly still free to investigate the deaths of a newborn child. But it'd prevent the criminal investigation of parents if the cause of death was found to be pregnancy-related.

(The full text of California’s AB 2223 is available for viewing here.)

A pair of articles from the Los Angeles Times shows that in California, within the past few years, mothers were facing murder charges over stillbirths.

This all comes within the backdrop that California Governor Gavin Newsom has declared his pro-abortion "sanctuary state" agenda as recently as December of last year. Among moves made by various legislative bodies over anticipation that SCOTUS will overturn Roe v. Wade later this year, Newsom has had California officials pushing through ease-of-access measures for the abortion process.

On the flipside of that are pro-life states like Arizona, Florida, South Dakota, Idaho and West Virginia who have all since been focusing on state legislation acting against abortions, so far this year.