A Republican member of the Arizona House announced Tuesday that she can’t support a proposal that would make it a felony in Arizona for a doctor to perform an abortion because the fetus has a genetic abnormality such as Down Syndrome.
Rep. Regina Cobb’s decision could end the effort to enact the wide-ranging anti-abortion proposal bill, at least as currently written, because Republicans hold just a one-vote House majority and Democrats appear solidly opposed.
Cobb said during a meeting of Republican House members to discuss pending bills that the measure goes too far by banning doctors from providing abortion care to women who have a fetus that can’t survive.
“I’ve had multiple family members who have had genetic problems with their children – they need to have that option,” Cobb said, who represents the Kingman area. “One was a baby that didn’t have a brain. She ended up carrying it full term due to her religious beliefs and not necessarily medical beliefs.”
“But it was something that was given as an option, and her life was in danger for the next probably six months because of this,” she said.
The measure backed by the social conservative group Center for Arizona Policy has been sailing through the GOP-controlled Legislature over unanimous opposition from minority Democrats. It passed the Senate on a 16-14 party-line vote early this month and was teed up for a House vote this week after passing a House committee two weeks ago.
Senate Bill 1457 makes it a Class 3 felony carrying a sentence of two to nearly nine years in prison for doctors to perform abortions because the mother decides she does not want to carry a child with a genetic abnormality. There are exceptions for medical emergencies.
The proposal also has a raft of other provisions designed to tighten Arizona’s already tough restrictions on abortion care.
It confers all civil rights to unborn children, allows the father or maternal grandparents of an aborted child to sue, and bans the spending of any state money with organizations that provide abortion care. The measure requires fetal remains to be buried or cremated and also forbids state universities from providing abortion care or counseling or referring anyone to an abortion provider.
Another provision bans abortion-inducing medication from being delivered by mail. Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, which pushes anti-abortion bills each year at the state Legislature, claimed medical abortions are more dangerous than surgical ones.
The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice group that advocates for access to safe abortions, disputes that claim.
It also repeals an old law allowing women to be charged for seeking an abortion, which bill sponsor GOP Sen. Nancy Barto said is needed to protect women from prosecution in case the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 decision that found women have a constitutional right to seek an abortion.
In addition to Cobb’s concerns about banning abortions when the fetus has a genetic abnormality, she said the university provision would require graduate medical students to leave the state for optional training.
“Many of you know I’m very pro-life, but I think this goes way too far at this point,” Cobb said. “And I think it goes into parental choices as far as what we’re determining. So I will be a no.”
Barto’s proposal is one of several introduced in the Republican-controlled Legislature this year, including one that would require prosecutors to charge women who decide to get abortions and the doctors who perform the procedures with homicide. That proposal from GOP Rep. Walt Blackman has not advanced.
Republican-dominated Legislatures in several states emboldened by the possibility that a more conservative Supreme Court could overturn the Roe decision have embraced proposals that could completely ban abortion this year.
In South Carolina, a lawsuit has already been filed challenging a so-called “heartbeat bill” the governor signed into law last month that would ban most abortions. In Idaho, lawmakers are also considering such a bill. The legislation makes abortions illegal once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks before many women know they are pregnant.
Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
