Here’s the relevant passage from yesterday:
It would be very difficult — and I said this to you privately and I said it publicly — for me to vote to confirm someone whom I knew would overturn Roe v. Wade, because I remember — and many of the young women here don’t — what it was like when abortion was illegal in America.
As a college student at Stanford, I watched the passing of the plate to collect money so a young woman could go to Tijuana for a back-alley abortion. I knew a young woman who killed herself because she was pregnant.
And in the 1960s, as a member of the California Women’s Board of Terms and Parole, when California had what was called the Indeterminate Sentencing Law, I actually sentenced women who committed abortions to prison terms.
And a reader writes:
The CA Supreme Court ruled abortion on demand as legal in 1969, 4 years before Roe v. Wade – via Planned Parenthood website
http://www.ppacca.org/site/pp.asp?c=kuJYJeO4F&b=139490
Feinstein did serve on CA women’s parole board as of 1960 via Project Vote website
http://www.vote-smart.org/bio.php?can_id=S0103103
Theoretically, prior to 1969, she could have been involved in parole hearings for abortion convictions, “prior” to Roe v. Wade, but her phrasing is, at best, disingenuous – implying that Roe v Wade legalized abortion in CA, which had been legal for 4 years prior to the decision.