What is the exact statutory text and legislative history of California Assembly Bill 2223 (perinatal death provisions)?
Executive summary
Assembly Bill 2223 (AB 2223), enacted in the 2021–2022 California legislative session, is a broad reproductive health statute that amends multiple sections of the Health and Safety and Government Codes to clarify reproductive privacy, add and repeal specific code sections related to perinatal death and coroner investigations, and to create immunity provisions; the bill was chaptered after concurrence in Senate amendments in late August 2022 [1] [2]. The bill text and the official legislative record show amendments that add Sections 123467 and 123469 to the Health and Safety Code, repeal Section 103000, and condition certain operative provisions on the enactment and sequencing of related bills [3] [2].
1. Exact statutory text: what the bill changes and adds
The enacted AB 2223 amends Section 27491 of the Government Code and amends Sections 103005, 123462, 123466, and 123468 of the Health and Safety Code while adding Sections 123467 and 123469 and repealing Section 103000 of the Health and Safety Code, language visible in the chaptered and amended bill texts published by the Legislature and LegiScan [3] [4]. The bill’s findings affirm that “every individual possesses a fundamental right of privacy with respect to personal reproductive decisions,” explicitly listing prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care as encompassed by that right — text quoted in the official bill pages [2] [5]. The statute contains an express nonuse clause stating that its privacy section “shall not be used to establish, bring, or support a criminal prosecution or civil cause of action seeking damages against any person who is immune from liability under Section 123467,” language reproduced in the legislative text [2].
2. Perinatal death provisions: coroners and immunity — the textual effect
AB 2223 removes or updates outdated provisions requiring coroners to investigate certain pregnancy losses and creates statutory protections intended to ensure that information about pregnancy outcomes is not used to criminalize people who lose or end pregnancies; that framing appears both in the bill’s amendments and in advocacy summaries, and the bill adds a statutory immunity framework through the new Section 123467 referenced in the bill text [3] [2] [6]. The bill also contains a complex operative-date clause: one section will only become operative if both this bill and a related bill are enacted by January 1, 2023, each amends Section 123466, and AB 2223 is enacted after Assembly Bill 2091 — a sequencing rule embedded in the bill text itself [2].
3. Legislative history: votes, committee steps, and chaptering
AB 2223 moved through multiple committee approvals and amendments before final passage; committee actions, re-referrals, suspense-file placements, and “do pass” votes are recorded in the bill history, culminating in concurrence in Senate amendments by the Assembly on August 30, 2022, and prior votes and procedural steps are logged in the official legislative history [1]. The public bill record on LegiScan and the California Legislative Information site provides the timeline of “do pass” recommendations, re-referrals to Appropriations and Health committees, suspense-file placement, and vote tallies at key points in May–August 2022 [1].
4. Intended effect and advocacy framing — competing interpretations
Advocates like ACLU California Action summarize AB 2223 as protecting reproductive freedom by clarifying that the Reproductive Privacy Act prohibits pregnancy criminalization, removing coroner-mandated investigations of certain pregnancy losses, and ensuring collected information isn’t used to target people in criminal or civil systems — a policy interpretation consistent with the amendments and new immunity language in the enacted text [6] [3]. Opposing viewpoints and legal challenges are not detailed in the provided sources; the legislative text itself includes procedural and sequencing provisions that could affect which specific amendments take effect depending on the enactment of related bills, which signals legislative negotiation and compromise rather than unconditional changes [2].
5. How to verify the statute and its history directly
The most authoritative sources for the exact statutory language and full legislative history are the chaptered bill text and bill history pages on the California Legislative Information site and LegiScan, which host both the final (chaptered) text and the sequence of amendments, committee analyses, and vote records [4] [1] [2]. For deeper documentary legislative history—committee reports, analyses, and Legislative Counsel opinions—research guides from California law libraries outline where to retrieve those archived committee materials and explanatory documents referenced in the bill record [7] [8] [9].