Abortion may be legal in California -- but that doesn't mean you can actually get one.

Iris Flores didn't expect to have an abortion this year; she expected to have a baby. When she found out she was pregnant in January, she was in a committed relationship with a man she planned to marry. The prospect of having a baby in September — and then raising the child alongside her 3-year-old son — was a good one.

Two months into the pregnancy, Flores's doctor said that there was something wrong with her amniotic sac and she might miscarry at any time.

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When Flores began to investigate her options, she was dismayed to learn that her health insurance plan wouldn't cover the abortion unless her life was in danger, which it wasn't. She began contacting abortion providers near her Fresno home, thinking she could pay out of pocket. But Flores couldn't find a single clinic that was willing to see her.

Her son’s birth was cesarean, which made her high-risk for complications. And she was going into her second trimester of pregnancy, which has become a de facto cutoff point for many providers, though under Roe v. Wade there is still a national right to abortion up until the third trimester.

In the tortuous public debate about abortion, federal and state laws are usually front and center. The assumption is that where abortion is legal, it is available. In the rare cases when that assumption is challenged, the focus is on states where there are only a handful of abortion providers.

But Flores isn't from rural Nebraska or the Texas panhandle. She's a 24-year-old human resources manager who lives in California's Central Valley. And California is a solidly pro-choice state reputed to offer relatively unfettered access to reproductive health care, including abortion. NARAL Pro-Choice America has ranked California the best state for reproductive rights, giving it an A+ while the nation as a whole got a D-.

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