Abortion rights measure files more than double the signatures to appear on the November ballot

Pamela Hill speaks about the need to restore access to abortion care at a news conference for the Arizona Abortion Access Act in Phoenix, on July 3, 2024. Hill received an abortion as a teen, when the procedure was illegal, and because of her provider’s lack of experience and training, she suffered from painful fertility issues for many years afterwards. Photo by Gloria Rebecca Gomez | Arizona Mirror

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.”

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 .

The post Abortion rights measure files more than double the signatures to appear on the November ballot appeared first on Arizona Mirror .