Critics have also objected to Becerra’s efforts to promote federal funding of fetal tissue research.
Becerra defended the state’s 2014 mandate which forced even Catholic religious— the Missionary Guadalupanas of the Holy Spirit—to provide abortion coverage in employee health plans. For this action—as well as for the state’s previous enforcement of the Reproductive FACT Act—the HHS Office for Civil Rights issued notices of violation to the state.
Earlier in the pandemic, Becerra advocated that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allow the abortion pill regimen to be prescribed remotely during the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2017, he sued the Trump administration for giving broad religious and moral exemptions from the HHS mandate, including to the Little Sisters of the Poor.
While a congressman, Becerra voted against a partial-birth abortion ban and also opposed a bill that criminalized the killing of an unborn child resulting from an assault on the mother.
Democrats for Life said Becerra’s positions are “divisive and extreme.” The organization noted that most Americans support abortion restrictions, and nearly 1 in 3 Democrats say they are pro-life. Becerra would place the Biden administration “into a radical position far removed from both self-identified Democrats and the US population as a whole.”
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“Attorney General Becerra brings few, if any, medical or public health credentials to a cabinet-level health position during the greatest medical crisis in over 100 years,” Day said in her statement. “Further, Becerra will ratchet up the level of America’s painful cultural divide on fetal life.”
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