Chris Love of the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign speaks at an April 17, 2024, news conference in Phoenix. In an interview, Love said a history of miscarriages and an abortion as a teenager led her to advocate for reproductive rights. (Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
Three months before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion, Arizona’s former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation banning abortion after 15 weeks.
When the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision came down in June 2022, GOP Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked the judiciary to lift a block on a dormant Civil War-era abortion ban, Arizona Mirror reported.
Though both of those restrictions got caught up in court post-Dobbs, eventually, the 15-week ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or genetic abnormalities became law.
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of conversations about voter-initiated efforts to restore abortion access across the country.
All of the back-and-forth led to a lot of confusion for people seeking abortion services and providers, said Chris Love, Arizona for Abortion Access’ spokesperson. “The confusion was obviously the point, right?”
The erosion of abortion access lit a fire under reproductive rights advocates like Love in the state. A group called Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom launched a ballot initiative in 2022 to put the question to voters about codifying abortion protections in state law, but with just a couple of short months to gather signatures, the organization failed to meet the state’s deadline, according to the Mirror .
A few months later, voters elected Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes, Democrats who ran on protecting reproductive health care, to replace Republicans Ducey and Brnovich. Advocates started planning to get an abortion measure on the ballot in 2024.
They succeeded: A proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November aims to restore the right to abortion up to fetal viability and beyond to preserve a person’s mental or physical health, and their life.
Like similar efforts across the country, abortion-rights advocates faced pushback from opponents who launched a “decline to sign” campaign, and they dealt with Republican lawmakers who described ballot measures using anti-abortion language. In April, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a 19th century near-total ban .
The legislature repealed that law before it could take effect. But the court’s decision boosted momentum for the ballot campaign, leading to an increase of volunteers and donations, Love said.
States Newsroom spoke with Love on Aug. 16, in the midst of court battles over a voters’ pamphlet featuring anti-abortion language and a bid by opponents to kick the measure off the ballot entirely.
Love’s group lost the first lawsuit but won the second.
She’s been working on reproductive rights advocacy for almost 10 years, starting out as a Planned Parenthood Arizona volunteer, and said when it comes to the tactics of abortion-rights opponents, “there’s nothing new under the sun.” She discussed her history of advocacy, pregnancy loss and why it’s important to say the word “abortion.”
The following interview has been edited and condensed.
States Newsroom: Was there a certain moment or situation where you felt called to work in reproductive rights?
Chris Love: Yeah, absolutely. I was pregnant once upon a time. I had health insurance that did not cover my pregnancy, because I was on an independent plan as opposed to a large employer plan. My husband and I were already engaged and had planned our wedding, and we had to get married a month before our actual wedding date in order for me to access reproductive health care. Unfortunately, I miscarried. The services that I was provided during that time were life-saving.
I was really appreciative of the care I received, but also I recognized that through my pregnancy journey — I got pregnant again and miscarried again — I recognized that accessing that care that I needed wasn’t as easy as it should have been. In particular, I can remember having a miscarriage and not being offered a D and C [dilation and curettage] and literally having to wait eight weeks after my miscarriage to have a D and C. That should have been care that would make things easier for me as a person suffering through a loss and trying to get pregnant again.
I also have my own other abortion stories. I chose to have an abortion when I was 19. I think this popped up over and over again in my life, and that’s why this is the advocacy that I’ve chosen to engage in.
SN: Thanks for sharing those experiences. There have been several Republican-led efforts to block the initiative. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the phrase “unborn human being” could remain in the first sentence of a pamphlet sent to voters. Can you talk about why those three words are significant, and what neutral, nonpartisan language looks like?
Love: In our process here, the Legislative Council actually gets to craft the language that goes into a voter pamphlet to every Arizona voter throughout the state. It is required by law to describe all of the initiatives in neutral terms. The one change that we asked for was a reference to “unborn human being.” Other places in that language use the term “fetus,” which is the scientific, medically-accurate language.
We recognize that “unborn human being” is something that is tinged with anti-abortion sentiment. We’ve seen that that phrase has been used by the opposition and folks who oppose abortion. The change that we asked for was not granted by the Legislative Council, so we decided to sue. And the trial court judge got it correct. We understand, and everyone understands, that “unborn human being” is literally an anti-abortion phrasing.
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SN: For folks who look at a 15-week ban and think that’s not as severe as a near-total ban, explain how broadening abortion rights in the state helps Arizonans.
Love: The current ban does not have exceptions for victims of rape and incest. The current ban does not have the broader medical exceptions for the physical and mental health of a pregnant person. The one exception that that ban does have is clearly undefined. It’s something that we’ve seen in other states where pregnant women are on death’s door before they can get the treatment that they need. We just don’t believe that pregnant Arizonans should have to go through that in order to get necessary and life-saving health care services. The current ban that we have simply harms pregnant patients here in our state. What we’re seeking to do is essentially go back to before the Dobbs decision was decided in 2022.
SN: Did the team ever consider asking voters to also secure the right to fertility treatments like IVF and contraception?
Love: I think that we are all focused on the broad bundle of reproductive rights and reproductive freedom. However, we had to create an initiative that was basically something that would pass based upon our laws in our state that limit us to posing laws that address a single subject. We felt that by simply addressing abortion at this point in time was something that would ensure that we wouldn’t get kicked off the ballot for trying to do more than the single subject law would allow.
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SN: You’ve been vocal about disdain for words like “choice” and euphemisms like “Roevember.” Why do you take issue with that particular language?
Love: Though I’ve been working in reproductive rights for a very long time, I try to use a reproductive justice lens in all of my advocacy. I recognize it has done our movement a bit of a disservice not to say the things, to say what we’re fighting for is abortion. To understand that even with a right to abortion, a lot of pregnant folks don’t have choices. They don’t have a choice in respect to issues of access to abortion for a number of different reasons.
Planned Parenthood as an organization stopped using pro-choice/pro-life framework in 2013, more than 10 years ago. It’s time for everyone to catch up on that, because the conversation is more nuanced, obviously. Those frameworks don’t capture that nuance. But right now, abortion is the thing that’s being attacked. Abortion is the right that was basically stripped by the Dobbs decision. Abortion is the right that we’re fighting for in this initiative. And I think we need to be clear about that.
Abortion is a medical procedure. It’s not a dirty word. We don’t need to whisper it. You’re using a medically accurate, scientific term. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I would encourage folks all the time to lean in to saying the things you mean. When we’re talking about abortion, we should say abortion. When we’re talking about birth control, we should say birth control. When we’re talking about IVF and fertility treatments, we should say those things so that we’re absolutely clear about destigmatizing all kinds of reproductive health care.
SN: You talked about being dedicated to a reproductive justice framework, which was a concept founded by Black women. What’s it like being one of the faces of this campaign in Arizona as a woman of color?
Love: Hard. [ Laughs .] Quite honestly, it’s one of those things as a Black woman in a political space, we’re always doing a lot of hard work. When it’s said and done, we might not get the credit for it when we win. But when we lose, we absolutely get the blame for it. It’s one of those things that I’ve had to wrestle with every day being in this space. And being a Black woman in Arizona, where we make up so little of the population here.
But we were also intentional about building an inclusive group of leaders and organizations. So, the leadership of our campaign is mostly women of color. Also, we have a lot of queer folks representing our organization. We’re an organization that is really led by women. We’re trying to center the folks that are really most impacted by the issue of abortion.
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