Talk:Abortion in California

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Abortion in California article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Abortion Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Abortion, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Abortion on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AbortionWikipedia:WikiProject AbortionTemplate:WikiProject AbortionAbortion articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Law Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Feminism Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Feminism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Feminism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FeminismWikipedia:WikiProject FeminismTemplate:WikiProject FeminismFeminism articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Women's History Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women's History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Women's history and related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women's HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject Women's HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Women's HistoryWomen's History articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Women's Health on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women's HealthWikipedia:WikiProject Women's HealthTemplate:WikiProject Women's Healthwomen's health articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

	Women
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of women on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.WomenWikipedia:WikiProject WomenTemplate:WikiProject WomenWikiProject Women articles

Gender studies Low‑importance

This article is part of WikiProject Gender studies. This WikiProject aims to improve the quality of articles dealing with gender studies and to remove systematic gender bias from Wikipedia. If you would like to participate in the project, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.Gender studiesWikipedia:WikiProject Gender studiesTemplate:WikiProject Gender studiesGender studies articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. To-do list: Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Assess : see Unassessed Gender studies articles and Unknown-importance Gender studies articles Cleanup : edit to see Collaborate : see /Collaboration Copyedit : edit to see Deletion sorting : see /Sexuality and gender Expand : edit to see Infobox : see Gender studies articles needing infoboxes Merge : edit to see Notability : edit to see NPOV : edit to see Orphans : Brannon Masculinity Scale · Domestic violence in lesbian relationships · Holy Virility · Media and gender · Michael Kaufman (author) · Women's education in Saudi Arabia Photo : see Wikipedia requested photographs of gender studies Split : History of feminism Stubs : see Gender studies stubs Translate : see /translation Update : edit to see Verify : Riot grrrl Needs attention : see Gender studies articles needing attention

California Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject California, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CaliforniaWikipedia:WikiProject CaliforniaTemplate:WikiProject CaliforniaCalifornia articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

	Women in Red: 2019
This article was created or improved as part of the Women in Red project in 2019. The editor(s) involved may be new; please assume good faith regarding their contributions before making changes.Women in RedWikipedia:WikiProject Women in RedTemplate:WikiProject Women in RedWomen in Red articles

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to abortion, which is a contentious topic. Please consult the procedures and edit carefully.

Daily pageviews of this article A graph should have been displayed here but graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at pageviews.wmcloud.org

Recent edit warring has centered around a

. The user who added this is a good faith editor with eight previous good improvements to the article. There are three issues with this good-faith change:

1. it is
   unique information in the lead which is not mentioned in the body (section Abortion in California § Legislative history
   mentions fetal viability, but with different values, leading to an internal dispute about facts)
2. it is too much detail for the lead, and especially for the
   tell[s] the nonspecialist reader what or who the subject is, ... Try to not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject.
   ") Previous versions were briefer, better.
3. Finally, what caused the edit warring wasn't even anything to do with the details of viability, or where in the article it should be discussed; rather, it was the introduction of the phrase "pregnant person" into the lead sentence. This ignited the edit warring, and has now been mentioned at
   WP:ANI
   , due to a related issue with this wording at other articles. Previous versions were uncontentious.

For all of these reasons, I have restored the wording of the

:

Abortion in California is legal up to the point of fetal viability.

which has been stable since June. Alternatively, the version before that,

Abortion in California is legal.

was stable for two years since its addition in May 2019. Either of those two would be fine as the lead sentence in my opinion, with details left to the second sentence, or further down in the lead. This also has the benefit of removing the reason for the edit warring in the lead sentence (point 3), although it may recur in discussions about the body. If we can prevent edit warring going forward by avoiding either expression, that may be desirable; otherwise, details about contentious wording choices like the one between pregnant woman or pregnant person should be discussed here first. Mathglot (talk) 21:10, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]