New political leaders in the state and other groups that could have a legal say make the fight over abortion rights in Arizona unlikely to end anytime soon.
Howard Fischer PHOENIX — Arizona's incoming attorney general says she won't appeal a ruling that doctors in the state can perform abortions through the 15th week of pregnancy.And regardless of what happens, Arizona's new governor wants state lawmakers to repeal not just the territorial-era law that made virtually all abortions in the state illegal, but even the one that the state Court of Appeals just said is now the law of the land.
The fact that the high court totally overturned the 1973 ruling and returned the power to the states to regulate abortion did not undo all those new laws, the judges said. And that, they said, means that doctors who follow those laws can't be prosecuted under the old law. That doesn't eliminate a possible petition to the state's high court. And that's because there are others involved in the case.
Bloom is now dead. And Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson, who inherited the reopened case, agreed to let Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, medical director of Choices Pregnancy Center, be substituted in his place. "It puts the government in charge of a woman's private health care decisions, with deadly consequences," the incoming governor said. And once a woman has gone beyond 15 weeks, she said, it"cruelly offers no exceptions for victims of rape or incest."
One case, she said, involves a woman who was the victim of rape or incest where"the trauma was so great they weren't able to recognize their pregnancy until it was far past the 15 weeks do to anything about it."A planned 2022 initiative to put the right to abortion into the Arizona Constitution faltered when backers did not have enough time to get signatures.