Sacramento, Calif. ? Give birth, get a parking pass?

California lawmakers are considering granting special parking privileges to women in the final three months of pregnancy and the first two months after birth.

The legislation would apply to more than a half-million women who give birth every year in California.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore’s bill would qualify pregnant women for “temporarily disabled” parking placards from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

“Let’s be reasonable here: There are challenges, physical challenges, that arise as a natural part of life,” DeVore said of pregnancy.

The Irvine Republican said it makes little sense to force a pregnant woman who has trouble getting out of her car, and might have a toddler in tow, to park in the outer reaches of a parking lot.

“It certainly makes you realize that for that very short period of time in their pregnancy, they are certainly by any practical definition (impaired),” he said.

DeVore is wading into a thicket abandoned four years ago by a colleague, then-Assemblyman Tony Strickland, R-Thousand Oaks, who proposed similar legislation, then shelved it amid a hail of controversy.

Opponents of the new proposal, Assembly Bill 1940, say pregnant women should exercise as much as possible.

“We really want pregnant women to be active, to be moving, to be walking,” said Shannon Smith-Crowley of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ California chapter, which opposes AB 1940.

A woman with complications from pregnancy that severely impair walking, or cause other serious health problems, can qualify for a temporary parking placard under existing law, she said.

“If she truly needs it, she can already get it,” Smith-Crowley said.