It is indisputable that providing health care for sick children is morally good. It is also indisputable that the current costs of maintaining hospitals in California will increase over the next twenty years. However, what is not indisputable is whether this bill will free up hospitals to provide health care for sick children or whether it will simply line the pockets of politically savvy hospital administrators. Given the overwhelming inefficiencies, ambiguities and potential misapplications which this bill lends itself to, the latter scenario seems far more likely.

It is a tired but true statement that this bill doesn’t raise taxes, it saves lives. Those lives are the lives of one of California’s most vulnerable and crucial populations – children. As of now, California’s children’s hospitals routinely provide treatment to terminally ill children over one million times a year, regardless of their parents’ ability to pay for that treatment.

The impact of Prop. 2 on California’s egg industry could potentially be catastrophic. If forced to move to cage-free practices, egg producers will have to absorb an estimated 20 percent rise in production costs according to a UC Davis study. Ultimately, this proposal would make California produced eggs 25 percent more expensive than conventional, factory farm eggs shipped in from other states or even Mexico.

Proposition 2, the “Standards for Confining Farm Animals Initiative Statute” is a modest proposal, whose value to California communities outweighs the supposed costs to factory farmers and retail grocers. Voting yes on Prop. 2 would not only end the inhumane practices of cramming veal calves, egg-laying hens, and pregnant pigs into cages not much larger than their own bodies, but would help to open new markets to small family farmers and producers.