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. …