Arizona’s abortion rights initiative
is one step away from being considered by voters in the fall, after the
campaign behind it turned in more than double the number of signatures
necessary to qualify for the ballot. 

The Arizona Abortion Access Campaign,
which aims to enshrine the procedure as a right in the state Constitution, announced it filed 823,685 total signatures on Wednesday,
the deadline for petition sheets to be handed over to the Arizona
Secretary of State’s Office for review. The initiative needs just
383,923 verified voter signatures to be placed on the November ballot.

Dawn Penich, a spokeswoman for the
campaign, touted it as a record-breaking achievement, and said it
highlighted the popularity of the initiative among Arizonans. 

“This is the most signatures ever
submitted by a citizens’ initiative in Arizona history,” she said, to
raucous cheering during a Wednesday morning news conference. “To put
that into context: that means one in every five Arizona voters signed
this petition.” 

Medical professionals and women celebrated the achievement as a win for reproductive rights.

Dr. Paul Isaacson, an OB-GYN and the
co-owner of Family Planning Associates Medical Group, one of a handful
of private abortion clinics in Arizona, denounced the state’s current
abortion restrictions and said the ballot initiative will restore the
ability of doctors to care for their patients without being handicapped
by the threat of criminalization. 

“Arizona voters will have the chance
to bring sanity and safety back to our state,” he said. “We will have
the chance to vote yes on the Arizona Abortion Access Act and put
medical decisions back where they belong: in the hands of patients and
their doctors, not politicians.” 

A 15-week ban, with no exceptions for
rape or incest, is the current law of the land. Doctors 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 class 6 felony, which
carries with it a potential prison sentence of up to 2 years. 

Isaacson called the gestational
deadline “arbitrary” and “unacceptable,” pointing out that many
pregnancy complications are not detectable until around 20 weeks. He
added that the law puts doctors in difficult situations, and has caused
him to weigh the danger of prison time and a revoked license against
what is best for his patient. 

“I would have to ask myself if
performing the abortion could land me on trial,” he said, explaining the
quandary doctors deal with when treating women who experience
potentially — but not immediate — life-threatening situations after 15
weeks. “She’s not dying at this moment, but she could be if we wait. Do I
use my medical expertise, knowing that a politician or a prosecutor
with no medical knowledge whatsoever may disagree with my decision? Do I
risk my license, do I risk her health and life? Do I put her on a plane
to another state where she can receive an abortion? What if she gets
sicker and dies while waiting or traveling? Am I then responsible for
her death because I didn’t help her earlier? 

“This is the insane situation that exists in Arizona today.”

Pamela Hill and her twin sister received illegal abortions at 16, before Roe v. Wade
guaranteed their access to the procedure. Those abortions, performed by
an inexperienced and unlicensed person, left them with lifelong
fertility issues and contributed to her sister’s suicide. Hill, who
suffered through miscarriages and hemorrhaging while trying to create a
family, said she supports restoring access to abortion care so that
other women don’t have to resort to dangerous alternatives. The Arizona
Abortion Access initiative protects a woman’s right to receive an
abortion up to 24 weeks of gestation, and includes an exception for
beyond that point if a health care provider deems it necessary to
preserve the life, physical or mental health of their patient. 

“Every woman deserves a chance at
appropriate medical care, not dangerous restrictions,” Hill said. “We
must vote to restore and protect the right to abortion. No politician
has the right to tell any woman when and where she deserves care.”  

Now that the campaign has ended its
signature gathering effort, it’s up to individual county recorders to
verify the signatures against their voter registration rolls to ensure
the forms are accurate. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who
was on site at the state Capitol to receive the hundreds of white boxes
full of signature petitions, said that his office expects to sort and
deliver the signature sheets to their respective counties within the
next 20 days, after making a general assessment that there are
sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot. 

And unlike in past years, the
handover of signatures was marked by heightened security. A fence
surrounded the pickup spot, bomb-sniffing dogs inspected the stacks of
white boxes, x-ray machines were used to verify safety and only a few
supporters from the campaign were allowed to accompany the delivery. On
the outside of the fence, proponents of the abortion access initiative
pressed up close against the chain link, cheering at intervals as
election workers unloaded pallets of dozens of boxes. Some supporters
held up a large white sign emblazoned with the slogan “Remember in
November.” 

Fontes said the new security
protocols would be in place for all three initiatives expected to turn
in signature sheets on Wednesday, including one to add open primaries to the state Constitution
and another to raise the minimum wage. The Democrat, who also signed
the abortion rights initiative, noted that while no specific threats
were received, his office was acting in response to a generally high
threat level.

“This is the first time that we’ve
had this type of security because of the very politically charged nature
of this and because we’ve seen this type of activity, particularly in
the abortion measure, reaching such a fever pitch in so many places,” he
said. “I wanted to make sure that my staff was safe and those citizen
signatures remain safe.”

Cindy Dahlgren, a spokeswoman for the anti-abortion It Goes Too Far Campaign, urges voters to reject the Arizona Abortion Access Act in November at the Arizona State Capitol, in Phoenix on July 3, 2024. Dahlgren is also the spokesperson for the Center for Arizona Policy, an organization that is behind many of Arizona’s restrictive abortion laws, including the current 15-week gestational ban. Gloria Rebecca Gomez/Arizona Mirror

Opponents of the abortion rights
ballot measure gathered to denounce it and urge voters to reject it in
November. The It Goes Too Far campaign was launched to push back against
the abortion rights initiative and seeks to frame it as too extreme to
approve. 

Joanna De La Cruz, a spokeswoman for
the anti-abortion campaign, said it has no plans yet to launch a lawsuit
seeking to block the Arizona Abortion Access Act from the ballot, but
will instead focus on educating voters over the next few months on why
it’s the wrong move for the state. 

But opponents face an uphill battle
to reach voters before the group behind the abortion rights initiative
does. The Arizona Abortion Access campaign has already started buying up
air time to broadcast ads in September and October. For one week in
October, the campaign has already reserved more than $1.8 million in TV
ads. 

Arizonans won’t be convinced to cast
their votes in favor of the abortion rights measure, De La Cruz said,
because current state law is acceptable to most voters.

“Arizona voters support limits on
abortion at 15 weeks or earlier,” she said. “The abortion campaign
doesn’t want voters to know that Arizona law already allows abortion up
to 15 weeks, and beyond that for medical emergencies.”

A January 2023 poll conducted by Marist
found that 79% of Arizonans support some limits on abortion, including
69% who think the limits should be at 12 weeks or less. But more recent
surveys indicate that Arizonans overwhelmingly support the abortion
rights initiative. A May poll conducted by CBS News and YouGov
estimated that as much as 65% of Arizonans surveyed, regardless of
party affiliation, would vote for the Arizona Abortion Access Act.

Critics of the abortion access
initiative reiterated that it would have far-reaching consequences for
women’s health. The It Goes Too Far campaign has sought to characterize
the act’s nullification of any law or policy that “restricts or
interferes with an abortion” as doing away with critical safeguards for
women experiencing medical emergencies. 

And the act’s reference to a “health
care provider” as the person who may authorize an abortion beyond 24
weeks if a woman needs one to preserve her life, physical or mental
health has also drawn criticism, with opponents saying it eliminates the
need for a doctor and opens the door to any medical professional,
including therapists and acupuncturists, to provide abortions. 

“You cannot take the medical doctor
out of the abortion process without putting girls and women at serious
risk,” warned Dr. Melinda Martin, a retired OB-GYN from Prescott who
joined the It Goes Too Far Campaign on Wednesday. 

Supporters of the abortion rights
initiative have consistently maintained that such claims constitute
intentional “misinformation” to push voters away. The act, proponents
say, doesn’t remove safeguards. Instead, it’s intended to eliminate
restrictive policies meant to make it more difficult for women to access
an abortion — like the state’s mandatory 24 hour waiting period, which
was passed in the hopes of convincing women not to go through with the
procedure. 

Dawn Grove, the top attorney for golf
club manufacturer Karsten Manufacturing, claimed that the ballot
measure has the potential to result in taxpayer funded abortions.
Because it enshrines abortions as a fundamental right in the state
constitution, she said, it opens the door to litigation that would force
government health care plans to cover the procedure. 

Grove pointed to a lawsuit launched by the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan
that seeks to overturn the state’s ban on Medicaid funding going
towards abortion care as proof of what could happen in Arizona. Michigan
passed its own abortion rights ballot measure in 2022, and the ACLU
argues the ban infringes on the constitutional right of Medicaid
recipients to obtain an abortion. 

“The amendment basically bakes into
the Arizona Constitution a fundamental right to abortion,” said Grove,
who unsuccessfully ran for attorney general as a Republican in 2022.
“And therefore, government health care plans that don’t lean toward that
fundamental right — let’s say they provide maternal services but they
weren’t providing abortion — now they would have to offer that.” 

Arizona is only one of half a dozen states
across the country set to see an abortion rights ballot measure in
November. And the topic is set to play an outsized role in the election
as reproductive rights groups and Democrats have sought to highlight the issue to mobilize voters. 

In Arizona, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in both legislative chambers, Democrats are banking on the recent turmoil over hostile abortion laws
to help them flip the state blue and keep a hotly contested U.S. Senate
seat. In other states, a focus on abortion has  proven to result in
record turn-out and upended political control. In Kansas, an unprecedented number of voters showed up to vote down a constitutional amendment
that would have allowed lawmakers to eliminate abortion protections and
in Virginia, where abortion wasn’t on the ballot but still top of mind
for voters, Democrats won a legislative majority.