Reproductive Freedom for All California’s Reproductive Freedom Legislative Scorecard is designed to hold anti-choice legislators accountable and to differentiate between legislators who support reproductive freedom, and legislators who are dedicated to going above and beyond to ensure that all people can make personal decisions about their own reproductive lives and futures. The scorecard takes into account the frequency with which a legislator votes, consistent with Reproductive Freedom for All California’s position on bills. “No Vote Recorded” is counted as a “No” vote unless the “No Vote Recorded” is attributed to an excused absence, indicated as “ABS.”

The scorecard incentivizes legislators to do more than vote to advance reproductive freedom by factoring in lead authorship and co-authorship of reproductive freedom bills and taking into account other actions taken by legislators to advance or curtail reproductive freedom.

Accordingly, the 2024 scorecard methodology dictates that legislators who only vote consistently to advance reproductive freedom can earn a maximum of a “B” and are characterized as Reproductive Freedom Defenders. Legislators who lead authorship for reproductive freedom bills receive a 10% increase to their score for each bill authored. Legislators who coauthor reproductive freedom bills receive a 5% increase to their score for each co-authorship. Other applicable factors are also taken into account such as: actions taken by a committee chair to prevent a reproductive freedom bill from advancing and introducing legislation that is hostile to reproductive freedom.

Reproductive Freedom for All California scores bills in the areas of reproductive health, rights, and justice, including access to sexual and reproductive health education, information, and counseling; equitable access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services including increasing affordability, expanding the number and types of providers, fighting harmful restrictions on care, and more; and access to pregnancy and postpartum services and support including improving maternal health outcomes, fighting pregnancy discrimination, expanding paid family leave, and more. Reproductive Freedom for All California scores bills that it is sponsoring, supporting, and opposing. In California, organizations are able to sponsor legislation in an official capacity, in addition to being able to support legislation generally.

The Reproductive Freedom Legislative Scorecard reflects annual and not aggregated scores.

(A+, A) Reproductive Freedom Champions

Champions are on the front line of the fight for reproductive freedom. These legislators not only take the right votes, they also lead author and co-author reproductive freedom bills, whip necessary committee and floor votes to advance these bills, and proactively and publicly utilize their platform to speak up and push to expand reproductive freedom.

(A-, B+) Reproductive Freedom Leaders

Leaders are strong advocates who consistently vote to advance reproductive freedom. They sometimes lead author or co-author reproductive freedom bills and may use their platform to support reproductive freedom.

(B, B-) Reproductive Freedom Defenders

Defenders consistently vote to expand reproductive freedom and may co-author the occasional reproductive freedom bill.

(C) Legislators with Mixed Support for Reproductive Freedom

Legislators with mixed support for reproductive freedom have taken votes both in favor of and against reproductive freedom.

(D) Legislators Hostile to Reproductive Freedom

Legislators hostile to reproductive freedom may vote for some policies protecting reproductive freedom, but vote against many others.

(F) Legislators Extremely Hostile to Reproductive Freedom

Legislators extremely hostile to reproductive freedom fail in the fight for reproductive freedom. They actively and fervently work to deny Californians our fundamental rights to access reproductive health care.

(NEI) Not Enough Information

These legislators did not complete a full or close-to-full term and therefore did not have the opportunity to author or co-author legislation at the beginning of the session, and were not present for all or most votes scored by Reproductive Freedom for All California.