Sacramento has a new plan: force abortion pills onto 92 community college campuses whether the schools can handle it or not.
Assembly Bill 2540, authored by San Francisco Democrat Catherine Stefani, would mandate that California community colleges with student health centers provide medication abortion access beginning in 2029, contingent on the Legislature appropriating funds. It builds on a 2019 law, Senate Bill 24, that already compelled UC and Cal State campuses to stock abortion pills. Now Sacramento wants to extend that mandate to every community college in the state.
The people who actually run these health centers oppose the bill. The Health Services Association of California Community Colleges sent lawmakers a letter in April saying many community college health centers don’t prescribe medication at all, and lack the staffing or infrastructure to do so. That’s not a minor implementation hiccup. That’s the people closest to the reality saying: this doesn’t work.
The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office estimates the bill would cost between $7 million and $27.9 million in one-time startup costs, plus $5.6 million to $9.3 million every single year to maintain. The supporters’ counter: Medi-Cal reimbursements and telehealth partnerships will make it financially sustainable. Right. Because state-mandated programs funded through Medicaid billing always come in under budget.
There’s no medical crisis driving this. California had roughly 185,700 abortions in 2025, according to the Guttmacher Institute, with 71% of them already performed through medication. Access exists. Planned Parenthood clinics, telehealth services, and off-campus providers are not vanishing. What supporters actually want is for abortion to be normalized as a routine campus service, like flu shots and STI screenings, so students grow up thinking of it as just another thing the school provides.
California already mandates this at four-year universities. Students who want medication abortion access at the UC or CSU system already have it. The argument that community college students are being denied access doesn’t hold. They can get referrals, access telehealth, or visit off-campus providers, the same routes billions of people use to access specialized healthcare every day.
Forcing unprepared clinics run by a single nurse to provide abortion services isn’t compassion. It’s a political directive dressed up in the language of equity. And California taxpayers will foot a bill ranging from $13 million to $37 million per year for the privilege of watching it fail.
