Committee to Defend Reproductive Rights v. Myers: abortion funding restrictions as an unconstitutional condition.

Over the last decade abortion has been one of the most controversial issues in American life. In Committee to Defend Reproductive Rights v. Myers (CDRR), the abortion funding issue reached the California Supreme Court. The court faced a challenge to provisions in California's 1980 Budget Act2 that severely restricted the funding of abortions in the Medi-Cal program, the state medical services program for indigents.3 Analyzing the selective funding of a constitutional right in a general benefit program as an unconstitutional condition, the court held that the abortion funding restrictions in the Medi-Cal program, which resulted in the funding of childbirth but not abortion, infringed the woman's exercise of her right of procreative choice. The court then applied a special standard of review for conditioned benefit programs, 4 and held that the asserted state interests were not sufficient to justify the infringement. Thus, the court struck down the abortion funding restrictions. This Note proceeds as follows. Part I summarizes the CDR facts