Dear Friend,
Earlier this morning the ground shook horribly as new barriers to health care were erected for young women across Arizona.
Today the Arizona Court of Appeals released a decision in a lawsuit Planned Parenthood had brought to prevent the imposition of the most harmful restrictions included in abortion regulations adopted by the Arizona legislature in 2009.
Today’s ruling is terrible for the approximately 235,000 Arizona women of child-bearing age who live outside of the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas. That’s because these newly enforceable restrictions may force Planned Parenthood to shut down abortion care in Flagstaff, Prescott Valley and Yuma.
Planned Parenthood is the only publicly acknowledged abortion health care provider outside of metro Phoenix and Tucson.
Just one restriction that now may become law will force women to:
listen to a doctor
read a state-mandated script
in-person
24 hours before an abortion may be provided.
Planned Parenthood has complied with the 24 hour requirement since shortly after the law was passed in 2009. Experienced, empathetic Planned Parenthood nurses have provided the state-mandated information over the phone. In order to comply with these new restrictions, however, Planned Parenthood will face the all-but-impossible challenge of hiring multiple physicians to read this script instead. What is more, the patient would now be banned from hearing the script by phone, necessitating a second medically unnecessary trip.
As the anti-women’s health legislators who wrote this law know, there simply are not enough physicians in Arizona’s rural communities who are trained and willing to play this role. And as they also know, requiring two trips across the vast distances in our state will be a burden some will not be able to overcome.
The impact of this ruling isn’t going to be felt just by women in rural communities. The doctor shortage may also force Planned Parenthood to shut down abortion care in as many as seven more PP health centers within metro Phoenix and metro Tucson.
We are reviewing today’s decisions to determine if there are further legal options to avoid this dire fate. Regardless, we will do everything in our power to minimize these new barriers. But this law is just too sweeping and inflexible to overcome entirely.
Some Arizona women are going to get hurt. Planned Parenthood and I are deeply troubled and saddened by this future.
Sincerely,
Bryan S. Howard
President and CEO
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