AZ Right to Life, Facebook
CV NEWS FEED // Arizona Right to Life has asked the state Supreme Court to prevent a pro-abortion amendment from appearing on the upcoming election ballot, arguing that the amendment’s description has misleading language.
The brief filed at the Arizona Supreme Court on Aug. 12 comes after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian ruled against Arizona Right to Life on Aug. 2, according to the Arizona Capitol Times.
AZ Right to Life’s lawyer, Jennifer Wright, penned the Aug. 12 brief, requesting the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s ruling and issue an order to prevent the pro-abortion amendment, Proposition 139, from appearing on the general election ballot.
Wright argued in the brief that the Amendment’s description “performs a ‘bait and switch” and appears to indicate that the Amendment would legalize abortion up to fetal viability, but it would actually legalize abortion up to birth.
“The Description is inherently misleading and confusing,” Wright wrote.
>> CHECK OUT MAYRA’S STORY: From Planned Parenthood Director to AZ Pro-Life Advocate <<
The description omitted the words “treating” and “good faith judgment,” which are included in the Amendment’s language. The description explains in part that the State “may not deny, restrict or interfere” with abortion up to fetal viability and that “a health care provider” would determine the threshold of viability.
Additionally, the description explains, the State “may not deny, restrict or interfere… after that point in pregnancy (fetal viability) if a health care provider determines an abortion is necessary to protect the life or the physical or mental health of the pregnant individual”.
Wright argued that this choice of language falsely presents the Amendment as allowing for abortion based “on objective evidence-based medical standards,” when the Amendment’s language itself actually allows for subjective opinions to determine that an abortion, even at late term, is necessary.
The Amendment’s language does not only say “health care professional,” but in full says, “in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional,” Wright pointed out.
The noted words omitted in the description, “treating” and “good faith judgment,” are “crucial” in showing the Amendment’s main provision, which Wright argued is “that the abortion provider may perform a post-viability abortion based solely on the provider’s subjective opinion.”
By omitting these words, Wright argued, the description caused an “[u]ntold number of” the ballot initiative’s signers to “believ[e] the Amendment relied on objective evidence-based medical standards.”
She noted that while the description had a word limit of 200, it only reached 190 words, and the initiative’s proponents “offered no excuse as to why” the noted words were left out.
>> CHECK OUT MAYRA’S STORY: From Planned Parenthood Director to AZ Pro-Life Advocate <<
Wright also argued that the description omitted other information important to signers, such as how various laws in the state would be affected by the Amendment. One example Wright noted is the parental consent law, which places regulations on assisting a minor to obtain an abortion.
Wright pointed out that the Amendment includes a provision that the State cannot “enact, adopt or enforce any law regulation, policy or practice that… penalizes any individual or entity for aiding or assisting a pregnant individual in exercising the individual’s right to abortion as provided in this section.”
According to the Arizona Capitol Times, when Judge Julian ruled against Arizona Right to Life after Wright presented similar arguments, Julian wrote, “Arizona courts have never required an initiative description to explain all potential effects of a measure.”
Another concern Wright expressed in the brief relates to a section in the Amendment that appears to allow for future regulations on abortion if there is a “compelling government interest,” so long as the regulation’s purpose is to elevate or continue to sustain the health of a mother seeking an abortion, “consistent with the accepted clinical standard of practice and evidence-based medicine.”
However, Wright wrote, “[e]ven the sole permitted government interest in furthering maternal health is illusory because it is subject to a catch: that it ‘does not infringe on that person’s autonomous decision-making.’”
>> CHECK OUT MAYRA’S STORY: From Planned Parenthood Director to AZ Pro-Life Advocate <<
“At a minimum, this means the State can do nothing to stop the abortion, even if it is being done for the worst eugenic or racist reasons, is being done in a horrific manner that is particularly painful to the prenatal human or is being done at any time up to birth,” she continued, later writing:
The Amendment would indeed bulldoze any legislative effort to regulate any facet of abortions that could impede a woman’s “autonomous decision-making.”
The Times reported that the Amendment’s proponents have to file a response this week.
