Chaos and confusion: As a window opens for legal abortion in Arizona, providers ride emotional roller coaster alongside patients

By Taylor Romine, CNN
November 7, 2022

Dr. Jill Gibson is jogging from patient to patient through the complicated maze of exam rooms, wearing navy scrubs, protective booties and a magenta shirt reading “I Stand with Planned Parenthood.” Gibson, Planned Parenthood Arizona’s Medical Director, saw nine patients the day CNN visited their Tempe clinic in late October. Those patients were there to decide how to proceed with a pregnancy, or to move forward with terminating their pregnancy.

Three weeks earlier, the latest in a series of back and forth legal rulings paved the way for the resumption of abortion care at shuttered Planned Parenthood clinics across the state. After the fall of Roe v. Wade in late June, Planned Parenthood closed its four clinics that provide abortion care because of “Arizona’s tangled web of conflicting laws,” the organization’s president and CEO, Brittany Fonteno, said at a press conference at the time.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/us/az-abortion-providers-mental-health/index.html


Wins for abortion rights advocates in Arizona, Ohio with new court rulings

Two restrictive laws were temporarily blocked on Friday.

By Meredith Deliso
October 8, 2022

Restrictive abortion laws were temporarily struck down Friday in Ohio and Arizona, two states where abortion services have been in flux in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned.

In Ohio, a six-week abortion ban is indefinitely blocked while a state constitutional challenge brought by the ACLU of Ohio on behalf of abortion providers in the state proceeds.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wins-abortion-rights-advocates-arizona-ohio-court-rulings/story?id=91192016


Arizona judge rules state can enforce near-total abortion ban

By Maeve Reston, CNN
September 24, 2022

An Arizona Superior Court judge ruled Friday that a 1901 ban on nearly all abortions in that state can be enforced, a decision that is likely to see an appeal and is all but certain to galvanize female voters to turn out in greater numbers in the state's closely contested US Senate and governor's races.

In ruling that Arizona's near-total ban on abortion could take effect, Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson granted a request by the state's Republican attorney general to lift a court injunction that had barred enforcement of Arizona's pre-statehood ban on abortion after the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Continued: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/23/politics/arizona-abortion-ban-ruling/index.html


‘I Don’t Really Want to Go to Jail’: How One Doctor Kept Doing Abortions Post-Roe

A doctor in Arizona kept performing abortions after Roe v. Wade was overturned. But due to an 1864 law criminalizing abortion, chaos reigned.

by Carter Sherman
June 27, 2022

In the hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday morning, all four phone lines at Gabrielle Goodrick’s abortion clinic in Phoenix rang nonstop.

The calls came in by the hundreds. People were in shock. They were hysterical. They cried. Many had no idea what Roe even was, let alone that a handful of Supreme Court justices had just ruled to erase the precedent, which had guaranteed the national right to abortion since 1973, as if it had never been. 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkgdbb/arizona-abortions-roe-v-wade


Advocates Challenge Arizona Court Ruling Medical Use of Marijuana During Pregnancy is Child Neglect

8/21/2021
by CARRIE N. BAKER

Reproductive rights advocates have come out in force to support Lindsay R., an Arizona woman whom the state of Arizona has branded a child abuser because she used medical marijuana while she was pregnant. National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) and 45 leading health organizations, doctors, ethicists, scientific and medical experts, and advocates have filed a brief asking an Arizona Court of Appeals to overturn the state’s action.

When Lindsay was pregnant, she had a life-threatening condition called hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), which caused constant nausea and vomiting. Her condition was so severe she was hospitalized twice during her pregnancy.

Continued:  https://msmagazine.com/2021/08/21/arizona-medical-marijuana-pregnancy-child-neglect/


Arizona passes sweeping anti-abortion bill banning procedure for genetic issues

Under bill signed by the governor, doctors can in some cases face felony charges for performing the procedure

Associated Press
Wed 28 Apr 2021

Arizona’s governor has signed a sweeping anti-abortion bill that bans the procedure if the woman is seeking it solely because a fetus has a genetic abnormality such as Down’s syndrome.

Doctors who perform an abortion solely because the child has a survivable genetic issue can face felony charges. The proposal also contains a range of other provisions sought by abortion opponents.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/27/arizona-anti-abortion-bill-downs-syndrome


Republicans employ new ‘extremely aggressive’ tactics to ban abortion

Bills that ban abortion and punish women and doctors under murder statutes have shown up in state legislatures recently

Jessica Glenza
Fri 12 Feb 2021

At a church-style rally in Arizona, the state Republican lawmaker Walter Blackman described his “perfect” legislative proposal: to prosecute women who have abortions for homicide alongside the doctors who provide them.

Such a bill would be patently unconstitutional in the US – but for anti-abortion rights activists like Blackman that’s the point.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/12/anti-abortion-activists-womens-rights


Republicans Want a New Weapon in the War on Abortion: Murder Charges

“If you want to spout, ‘My body, my body choice,’ you need to spend some time in our Arizona penal system,” said one state lawmaker.

by Carter Sherman
29.1.21

The U.S. anti-abortion movement is built on the belief that getting an abortion is tantamount to killing a child. Now, some abortion opponents want to turn that idea into law.

Legislators in at least three states—Arizona, North Dakota and Mississippi—introduced bills for the 2021 legislative session that would allow prosecutors to charge abortion providers with murder, as part of a massive wave of anti-abortion legislation that’s flooding statehouses across the country. So far this session, at least 143 abortions restrictions have been introduced in 25 states, and there's likely more to come.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdaa4/republicans-want-a-new-weapon-in-the-war-on-abortion-murder-charges


USA – These 5 States Are the Next Battlegrounds in the Abortion Wars

These 5 States Are the Next Battlegrounds in the Abortion Wars
Abortion rights groups are pouring tens of millions into these states to flip their legislatures in 2020.

by Carter Sherman
Oct 22 2019

When Americans think about the future of abortion, they often think of the Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion nationwide in Roe v. Wade. But over the last decade, the real battle over abortion hasn’t been in Washington, D.C. — it’s played out in statehouses across the country, where legislators have passed restriction after restriction on the procedure.

Now, abortion rights activists believe they have a unique chance to wrest back those state legislatures from abortion opponents. And though Election Day 2020 is still more than a year away, they’re already preparing.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/43kpy3/these-5-states-are-the-next-battlegrounds-in-the-abortion-wars


USA – How the abortion debate has skewed Americans’ understanding of pregnancy

How the abortion debate has skewed Americans’ understanding of pregnancy
What led a Walgreeens pharmacist to deny a woman her prescription.

by Lara Freidenfelds June 26, 2018

Last week, Nicole Arteaga lost her very-much-wanted pregnancy. As often happens in early miscarriages — Arteaga was only nine weeks along — her body had not yet expelled the remains. Her doctor prescribed misoprostol to help her body complete the process.

Yet when she went to fill her prescription, she was turned away. The Walgreens pharmacist who denied her prescription cited his “ethical beliefs.” (Misoprostol is also used to induce abortion.)

His refusal highlights how fundamentally abortion politics have limited our understanding of pregnancy, and how a failure of understanding can translate into a heartbreaking failure of compassion.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/06/26/a-walgreens-pharmacist-denied-a-woman-medication-for-her-miscarriage-his-actions-show-how-the-abortion-debate-has-skewed-our-understanding-of-pregnancy/?utm_term=.327b4bea3a89