What exactly does California law SB 44 (or current statutes) say about newborn care and end-of-life decisions?

1. What the record actually shows about “SB 44” and the limit of available reporting

None of the documents provided refer to a law titled “SB 44” concerning newborn care or end‑of‑life choices; the available sources instead address other bills and existing statutes — for example, reporting centered on a reproductive‑health bill (commonly discussed as AB 2223 or similar proposals) and California’s End of Life Option Act — so any direct claim about “SB 44” cannot be confirmed from these sources ^{[6] [3] [4]}.

2. Newborn care and safe‑surrender protections under California law

California’s Safe Surrender (Safe Haven/Newborn) law allows a parent to relinquish a newborn safely without fear of prosecution when done under the law’s conditions, a longstanding program intended to prevent infant abandonment and protect newborns — the program is described in official materials and municipal summaries of the Safe Surrender Baby Law ^[1].

3. Perinatal‑loss provisions, criminal liability and the disputed reproductive‑health bill language

A recent California reproductive‑health bill was amended to include language about “perinatal deaths” and to limit civil and criminal liability related to pregnancy loss and pregnancy‑related causes of infant death; opponents argued that one provision could be read as exempting mothers from liability if an infant dies during the “perinatal period,” while supporters and authors said the intent was to protect people who experience pregnancy loss from prosecution and to keep intrusive investigations out of reproductive health care ^{[2] [6] [7]}. Fact‑checking outlets examined these claims and concluded that online assertions the bill “legalizes infanticide” are false or misleading, while noting that the statutory language required clarification and that investigations would still proceed if there is evidence of foul play ^{[3] [8] [9]}.

4. End‑of‑life law: medical‑aid‑in‑dying and related statutes

California’s End of Life Option Act allows mentally capable, terminally ill adults with a prognosis of six months or less to request and self‑administer prescribed medication to end their life, subject to procedural safeguards such as capacity determinations, witness attestations and counseling about alternatives like palliative care; the Act was amended (SB 380) to shorten waiting periods and more recently legislation (SB 403) was enacted to prevent the law from expiring in 2031, preserving the medical‑aid‑in‑dying framework under California law ^{[5] [4]}. Separate state law on health care decisions (the California Health Care Decisions law) governs surrogate decision‑making and other end‑of‑life processes for incapacitated patients, and professional guidance (for example from the California Medical Association) provides context for clinical practice though those sources were not cited as statute text in the documents provided ^{[10] [11]}.

5. Political controversy, how claims diverge from text, and the reporting limits

The debate around the reproductive‑health bill illustrates how statutory phrasing about “perinatal” protections generated charged interpretations: anti‑abortion groups framed the provision as permitting infanticide, while bill proponents called those claims absurd and emphasized protections for grieving parents and reproductive‑health confidentiality; fact‑checkers (Reuters, AP, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact) reviewed the language and found the broad “legalize infanticide” claims unsupported though they urged clarifying amendments and noted investigators retain authority when there is evidence of intentional harm ^{[6] [3] [9] [8] [7]}. The sources supplied do not include the exact statutory text of any “SB 44,” nor do they include legislative history for a bill by that number on these topics, so definitive statements about a specific “SB 44” cannot be drawn from the provided record ^{[3] [6]}.