Arizona abortion-rights amendment cleared for November ballot

by Caitlin Sievers for Arizona MirrorVoters in November will be able to decide whether to amend the Arizona Constitution to guarantee the right to abortion, state election officials said Monday.The Arizona Abortion Access Act collected around 578,000 valid signatures, significantly more than the nearly 384,000 it needed to qualify for the ballot.“This is a huge win for Arizona voters, who will now get to vote YES on restoring and protecting the right to access abortion care, free from political interference, once and for all,” Cheryl Bruce, campaign manager for the initiative, said in a written statement. The Abortion Access Act, which will be Proposition 139 on the ballot, would guarantee a woman’s right to an abortion up to the point of fetal viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Exceptions to that limit would be allowed if a health care provider determined it was necessary to preserve a patient’s life, physical or mental health.The constitutional amendment would also forbid the state from adopting or enforcing any policy that restricts access to abortion unless its intent is to safeguard the patient’s life or health — potentially upending decades of anti-abortion laws passed to encumber and deter women from seeking abortions.Currently, Arizona has ban after 15 weeks of gestation, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Health care providers who perform an abortion beyond that gestational deadline for any reason except to prevent a patient’s death or the “substantial and irreversible impairment” of a major bodily function face a possible felony charge, with a potential prison sentence of up to two years.Members of the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign who gathered signatures for the constitutional amendment celebrated their win on Monday.“Thousands of local volunteers, and dozens of organizations focused on reproductive rights, healthcare, faith communities, and veterans rights, not to mention millions of Arizonans have been looking forward to this day for more than a year,” campaign spokeswoman Chris Love said in the statement. “More than 7,000 Arizonans worked through snow, heat, wind and rain since September 2023 collecting these signatures from friends, neighbors and fellow voters to ensure we would have a say in the laws that govern our lives.”The initiative is still facing litigation, however. A trial court judge on Aug. 5 shot down a lawsuit filed by Arizona Right to Life, an anti-abortion organization. In the suit, attorneys for Right to Life challenged the 200-word summary of the act shown to voters before they signed petition sheets to get the act on the ballot. The organization claimed that the summary was so misleading that all of the signatures gathered for it should be disqualified.One of Arizona Right to Life’s qualms with the summary of the act was the use of the term “health care provider” while the text of the act refers to the “treating health care provider” when describing who has the authority to determine that an abortion is necessary beyond fetal viability. Attorneys for the anti-abortion organization claimed that omitting the word “treating” misled those who signed the petition into thinking that a neutral doctor, and not an abortion provider, would be the person deciding whether an abortion past the point of fetal viability was warranted.But a Maricopa County Superior Court judge disagreed, dismissing the lawsuit. Two days later, Right to Life filed an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, which is expected to rule before the Aug. 22 deadline to print ballots. Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.Campaign Action