Some Arizona reproductive health, rights and justice advocates opposed the abortion bill at last year’s Arizona Capitol in Phoenix. The Arizona Legislature has passed a ban on abortions after 15 weeks. The House passed the measure on Thursday, a month after the Senate agreed, and it has now been turned over to Republican Governor Doug Ducey for his expected signature.
Ross D. Franklin / AP
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Ross D. Franklin / AP
Some Arizona reproductive health, rights and justice advocates opposed the abortion bill at last year’s Arizona Capitol in Phoenix. The Arizona Legislature has passed a ban on abortions after 15 weeks. The House passed the measure on Thursday, a month after the Senate agreed, and it has now been turned over to Republican Governor Doug Ducey for his expected signature.
Ross D. Franklin / AP
PHOENIX (AP) – The Arizona Legislature on Thursday joined a growing list of Republican-led states to pass aggressive anti-abortion legislation as the conservative U.S. Supreme Court moves consider restoring abortion rights that have been around for nearly 50 years.
The House of Representatives voted on party lines to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, mirroring the Mississippi law currently being considered by the nation’s high court.
The bill explicitly states that it does not exceed a state law in effect for more than 100 years that would ban abortion altogether if the Supreme Court overruled the Roe v. Wade case, a 1973 case that provided the right to abortion in law.
The bill is now passed on to Republican Governor Doug Ducey, an anti-abortion advocate who has signed every anti-abortion law that has been enacted since he took office in 2015.
Florida lawmakers passed a similar 15-week abortion ban earlier this month that Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign. A West Virginia bill failed to pass the state Senate by the time its legislative session ended earlier this month after passing the House of Representatives.
An Arizona proposal that would ban abortions after about six weeks has not gone ahead. A bill was enacted in Texas last year allowing private citizens to enforce the ban, and the Supreme Court has refused to block it. The governor of Idaho signed a copycat bill this week. Those measures are unique in that they allow private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who helps someone else get an abortion after six weeks. It has made legal challenges difficult because the government is not involved in enforcement.
Arizona’s 15-week abortion ban makes no exceptions for rape or incest or for a medical emergency.
“I’m becoming more scared at this point by this bill,” Democratic Representative Mitzi Epstein said during Thursday’s floor debate. “I am appalled that this bill would prohibit health care for a woman who had had a natural and tragic and terrible miscarriage and that they would not be allowed to receive this health care.”
Republican supporters said little in the floor debate.
Minority Democrats say the measure is unconstitutional and that any ban would disproportionately affect poor and minority women, who would not be able to reach the states without abortion laws. Strict.
But Senator Nancy Barto, the Republican sponsor of the bill, said she hopes the high court will uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.
“The state has an obligation to protect life, and that’s what this bill is about,” Barto said during a Senate debate last month.
The debate and vote on the 15-week abortion ban took place on the morning of the same day, the House of Representatives also debated the ban on transgender girls from competing on high school or college sports teams in line with their own standards. their gender. The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to pass the bill Ban on sex reassignment surgery to anyone under the age of 18.
Arizona already has some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws, including one that would automatically outlaw it if a high court overturned Roe altogether.
Republicans hope to introduce a 15-week ban that would take effect quickly if the Supreme Court further restricts abortion rights but stops in the case of Roe’s outright ouster. This measure closely resembles Mississippi law.
Under current abortion regulations, abortion is legal until the time the fetus is able to survive outside the uterus, usually around 24 weeks.
Barto’s bill It is an offense for a doctor to perform an abortion after 15 weeks, but it is strictly forbidden to prosecute those who become pregnant for receiving an abortion. Doctors can face felony charges and lose their medical license. There is an exception where the mother is at risk of death or serious permanent disability, but not in cases of rape or incest.
Of the 13,186 abortions performed in Arizona in 2020, 636 were after 15 weeks of gestation. According to the latest data from the Arizona Department of Health.
