Many insurers exclude maternity services, which include post-childbirth care, in their basic plans. More than 200,000 women between the ages of 19 and 44 in California have health insurance plans that do not cover maternity care.

SB222 by state Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, requires health insurance companies to provide maternity coverage as part of their individual insurance plans.

Evans said just 12 percent of individual insurance plans covered maternity care in 2010. She said her bill "ensures that women and mothers-to-be no longer need to go without maternity care or maternity health insurance coverage."

AB210 by Assemblyman Roger Hernandez, D-Baldwin Park, requires group health insurance policies to provide women with maternity coverage. Hernandez said babies born to low-income families affected by the lack of adequate maternity care are disproportionally born with low birth weights.

Anthony Wright, executive director at Health Access California, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, says the bills represent a positive development for the health care marketplace.

"We don't have a race to the bottom in terms of insurances trying to carve out certain benefits as a means of competing with one another," he said.

Blue Shield of California, a health insurance company that covers 3.3 million people, approves of the legislation. In a statement, the company said maternity coverage should be a core benefit and that requiring it will allow more people to share the cost.

Both laws will take effect Jan. 1.