If President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican Senate try to roll back reproductive health rights or pursue a widely prophesied national abortion ban, California Attorney General Rob Bonta is poised to challenge him.
Two years ago, Bonta, a Democrat who heads the state justice department, directed his staff to draft legal analyses against a possible national abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned 50 years of abortion protections under Roe v. Wade. Bonta said they thought through arguments, even going so far as to decide in which court they would file suit.
Bonta said his team had a strategy in place starting from Election Day.
After the Dobbs decision, Trump boasted that he “was able to kill” Roe v. Wade. He said he would veto any federal abortion ban after declining to say whether he’d veto one. And Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, a road map for the next conservative president that was crafted by many former Trump advisers, described the overturning of Roe as “just the beginning.” It also calls for ending a requirement that Obamacare plans cover emergency contraceptives; the mailing of medication abortion pills; and federal funding of Planned Parenthood and other clinics that provide abortion.
By comparison, Californians have enshrined rights to abortion and contraception into the state constitution. The state in 2022 also enacted 15 bills and approved $200 million in new spending to expand abortion protections in the Golden State and make it easier for low-income and out-of-state patients to get care.
Bonta, who was appointed attorney general in 2021 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, has sued a national anti-abortion group and a chain of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers for marketing unproven and potentially harmful “abortion pill reversal” procedures. In September, he sued Providence St. Joseph Hospital, a Catholic hospital that had allegedly denied a patient an emergency abortion, instead discharging her with an offer of a bucket and towels. Last week, Bonta reached a settlement with the city of Beverly Hills over its alleged blocking of an abortion clinic from opening.
He has joined other states in lawsuits over medication abortion, emergency abortions, and travel between states for care. For Bonta, the issue of abortion is personal. His wife, Assembly member Mia Bonta, shared in 2022 that she had an abortion when she was 21. As her boyfriend, Bonta held her hand when she made the decision.
Bonta spoke to KFF Health News correspondent Molly Castle Work about his passion to protect women’s reproductive health rights and how his upbringing influences his legal decisions. This interview, which took place Oct. 31, has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How do you think your upbringing prepared you for this job?
A: It starts with inspiration from my parents. They learned that you can’t just hope and wait for the things that you want; you have to fight. They joined the United Farm Workers of America. My dad worked in the front office with Cesar Chavez, my mom with Dolores Huerta. They were fighting for the people that feed our state and our nation but weren’t being treated right.
I remember growing up, I would go with my mom … to protests and rallies and demonstrations. I was at her side, slogans in my throat and fist in the air, or placards in my hand, calling out the human rights abuses. There was that belief that everyday people cannot accept the unacceptable, and if something’s not right, we’ll fight, and can and do create the change that they seek.
I want to be the person that comes in with my positional power, my authority, the reach and the strength of this office behind me and on my side working together to protect those people who are being mistreated and wronged.
Q: You’ve been a longtime champion of reproductive rights. Why are you so passionate?
A: Some things you just feel in your gut. And you have your own personal story. My wife has told the story, and it’s her story to tell. She had an abortion, and I accompanied her and held her hand. It was her choice and her right and her decision and her bodily autonomy and self-determination. And every woman deserves that.
And I don’t like bullies. I don’t like people who attack others and try to take things away from them. It’s wrong and it’s my role to protect those rights. And these are not imagined rights — before Dobbs, they existed for 50 years for every woman in the United States of America.
We’re in a fight for freedom right now, certainly including reproductive freedom, and it’s something that I think the entire nation has some connection to, and it’s wrong for elected officials, presidential candidates, to make political decisions, to get in the way of a decision that should be made between a woman, her doctor, her faith.
Q: Tell me more about your wife’s decision to share her own abortion story after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision. Why was it important for you both to share that story?
A: We talked about it, of course, but it was her decision. And it’s not something that’s easy to talk about, but I think it was important to talk about, especially given that moment.
It was painful to see that people lost faith and trust in the Supreme Court and it was important for people to know that their leaders are side by side with them, have experiences and passions and cares just like them, have worries and fears just like them.
And I think it was important to Mia to emphasize the impact of these decisions on women of color and vulnerable women, poor women. It was important for her to lift up her voice and, through her pain, own her power and show her strength and communicate with others about her own experience.
Q: You have joined and led multistate efforts to defend abortion in states such as Idaho and Texas. Why is it California’s place to push for access outside its borders?
A: We fight the fight wherever it is. We get involved in all sorts of different types of issues, supporting transgender and gender-nonconforming youth, supporting commonsense constitutionally lawful gun safety laws. And certainly when it comes to reproductive health care, we do the same. There are strategic, intentional, deliberate attacks, by design, in certain courts outside of California. And so it’s very important for us to bring our knowledge, our expertise, our legal insight into those fights.
Q: What happens if Trump wins the election? How does that change your job? And what type of preparations are you making?
A: We’ve been preparing since the Dobbs decision dropped. Shortly after that, I asked my team to start writing the brief for a national abortion ban: Just think it through, you know. Think through the arguments. Do we have a pathway to challenge it in court?
Hopefully we’ll never have to challenge it in court. There’s no national abortion ban, and maybe there never will be, but we want to be ready if there is. We want to have thought through it when we had time and been able to do the in-depth and the nuanced review.
I think the people of our state and the people of our country want us to have been doing that.
Q: So, I’m sure you know I have to ask: Are you considering a run for governor?
A: There will be a time to make that decision after the election. That time is not now. I am honored and grateful that I’ve gotten lots of encouragement from people. That gives me inspiration about the work that my team is doing.