Arizona lawmakers move on 15-week abortion ban if Roe v. Wade is overturned

Arizona lawmakers have set the legislative wheels in motion to enact a law banning most abortive procedures when a fetus has reached 15 weeks of gestation.

The Senate Judiciary approved Senate Bill 1164 on a 5-3 party-line vote Thursday morning.

If signed into law, the legislation would give the state a law similar to the Mississippi statute currently under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The bill includes a medical health emergency exception as well as a Class 6 felony charge for any doctor who knowingly performs an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, said her bill is more in line with abortion laws around the world.

“We can all agree that life is a human right,” she said. "Arizona is ready for common sense on this issue and ready to save more lives and save women from trauma."

Like the Arizona bill, the Mississippi law enacted in 2018 prohibits abortions after 15 weeks of gestation and includes exceptions for medical emergencies and in cases of severe fetal abnormalities. A Supreme Court decision on Mississippi's law likely will be announced by June 2022. The Florida Legislature also is debating a similar measure.

"This is an ugly, ugly, ugly business. Tearing an unborn baby apart is unfathomable in civil society,” Arizona state Sen. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, said.

Sen. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, D-Tucson, voted against the bill, calling it government intrusion into the lives of Arizona women.

“I don’t want the men of our state’s GOP caucus coming into our houses and forcing upon us the choices we have to make,” Stahl Hamilton said.

Several speakers shared personal experiences lending credence to both sides of the abortion argument. Opponents who spoke said the state still would see abortions occurring, but they would happen in “the back alleys” of the state.

Cathi Herrod, president of the nonprofit Center for Arizona Policy, said the committee's passage of SB 1164 is the” first step toward protecting more babies and women in Arizona” if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Mississippi law.

“Life is a human right, and Arizona law requires state laws to be interpreted to value all human life,” Herrod told The Center Square. “At 15 weeks, a preborn baby has a fully formed nose, eyelids and eyebrows. She sucks her thumb and she feels pain. She has organs, including a heart that pumps blood through her tiny body. We know a lot more about the developing preborn baby than we did in the 1970s. It's time we follow the science and humanize our laws.”

Opponents of the bill warned of the importance that Roe v. Wade, a 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, be upheld.

“Arizona is seeing an unprecedented wave of attacks on our reproductive rights,” the nonprofit Progress Arizona said in a statement. “Abortion could soon cease to exist in Arizona. This could be one of our last chances to protect reproductive care in Arizona.”