Arizona needs clear answers about abortion now that Roe v. Wade is overturned

Editorial board
·4 min read
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Federal abortion law established half a century ago no longer defines reproductive rights in America.

Since May 2 when Politico reported it had obtained a leaked draft of a Supreme Court ruling that would vacate Roe v. Wade, Arizona politicians and legal minds have puzzled what it could mean for our state.

Blue state legislatures such as New York and California have already codified into law what Roe granted women since the 1973 landmark ruling. But more conservative states such as Arizona will have to find a way forward with anti-abortion Republican legislatures clashing with larger populations grown accustomed to Roe v. Wade’s protections.

Polling has long shown that Americans and Arizonans support reproductive choice with qualifiers, perhaps best summed up by former President Bill Clinton’s famous construction that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

Abortion poses difficult moral questions

Arizona has a reputation for conservative politics and rugged individualism. It also has a powerful libertarian streak distrustful of big government and its edicts.

In that spirit, the late Barry Goldwater spent much of his career supporting reproductive choice and helped his wife, Peggy, establish the first family-planning clinic in Phoenix.

In 1992, Goldwater appeared in ads opposing Proposition 110 that would have prohibited abortion except to save a mother’s life or in cases of rape or incest. Arizonans voted more than 2 to 1 against the initiative.

Abortion has been a wrenching issue in American politics because the moral questions are profound. There are no easy answers.

But society has to decide.

Women deserve the right to choose

A person holds a sign that reads "Never again," with a wire hanger glued to it, during an abortion rights protest held at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix on May 3, 2022.
A person holds a sign that reads "Never again," with a wire hanger glued to it, during an abortion rights protest held at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix on May 3, 2022.

We’re sounding a clear note that reproductive rights are essential to women and urge Arizona lawmakers to quickly reestablish them now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

To deny reproductive choice requires such a serious intrusion of government into the private lives and most intimate decisions of women and families that it is unthinkable to go backwards.

Another view: Abortion rules should be up to Arizona voters, not lawmakers

As Barry Goldwater understood when he helped his own daughter find a doctor to end an unwanted pregnancy, abortion is going to happen in American society whether it is legal or not. An estimated 1 in 4 U.S. women will have an abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports reproductive rights.

Only when abortion is legal can we assure that women get the procedure in safe and professional settings.

Roe v. Wade set an expectation. Most support it

Doctors and nurses who worked the pre-Roe hospital emergency wards remember the agony of young women suffering from life-threatening lacerations, puncture wounds and infections from underground abortions.

Americans will never tolerate that again.

Nor will they tolerate for long young women or their doctors heading to prison because they ended a pregnancy. Roe v. Wade may be overturned, but its 50 years as law cemented in the American psyche a determination to never go back to barbaric days of old.

Some Arizona politicians will be tempted to challenge that ethos and will reap the whirlwind, creating new movements for reproductive choice that will assert their demands at the ballot box.

If they haven’t learned yet, they will soon know that Americans overwhelmingly support these rights.

In March, 61% of Americans said “abortion should be legal under all or most circumstances,” according to the Pew Research Center. Only 37% said it should be “illegal in all or most circumstances.”

Will Arizona revert to territorial law?

Legal experts and religious conservatives are still debating which Arizona law will determine reproductive choice in the state now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

Will it be a territorial era law that dictates two to five years of prison for anyone who performs or helps perform an abortion?

Or will it revert back to a new law passed in April that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and makes no exception for rape or incest?

The new law, as reported by The Arizona Republic’s Ray Stern, makes “knowingly performing an abortion after 15 weeks a low-level felony for licensed physicians, with an exception for a ‘medical emergency.’ The law grants immunity to women, protecting them from prosecution ‘for conspiracy to commit any violation of this article’.”

Our leaders must provide clarity now

Roe v. Wade is gone. Its absence will create enormous uncertainty in Arizona.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and the Arizona Legislature have a duty to act quickly and provide clarity. If not, we are facing a political earthquake.

At the very least, our leaders should quickly freeze in place the rights that Roe guaranteed until the Legislature or the voters through ballot initiative decide what will be the future of reproductive rights moving forward.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic’s editorial board. What do you think? Send us a letter to the editor to weigh in.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Which Arizona abortion law will women face after Roe v. Wade?