According to March of Dimes, nearly 7 million people of reproductive age live in a county that is considered a maternity care desert as of 2022. About 2.2 million of those people live in an area with no hospital providing obstetric care, no birth center and no obstetrics providers. Photo via Getty Images
This year is only a little more than halfway over, but it’s already been a rollercoaster for reproductive health care access in Arizona.
In April, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a 160-year-old abortion ban can again be enforced in the state — a ban with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the woman. The next week, a leaked email showed anti-abortion Arizona politicians’ desire to trick voters into banning abortion by creating similar sounding abortion-related measures on the ballot in November, and stated that transferring power from the Legislature to voters would be a “con” to their strategy. Then, the Arizona Supreme Court granted a motion to stall the enforcement of the 1864 ban — but only until the fall.
As a physician practicing in Phoenix, it’s clear that my patients — and all Arizonans — deserve better than these political games. I became a physician to provide the safest, most respectful care to my patients, and to trust and support them when faced with complicated and difficult decisions. But when politicians interfere with private health care decisions, it puts the lives of my patients, and countless patients across Arizona, at risk.
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We’ve seen what’s happened in other states: In Louisiana, Kaitlyn Joshua, a mother looking forward to having a second baby, developed pregnancy complications including heavy bleeding, and discovered she was miscarrying. But because of Louisiana’s abortion ban, she had to wait for miscarriage treatment, forcing her to suffer and bleed alone, and jeopardizing her health. In Arkansas, Chelsea Stovall’s pregnancy developed life-threatening abnormalities and began putting her life at risk. Arkansas’ abortion ban dictated that she had to wait until her life was in imminent danger for doctors to act. She and her husband were forced to flee to Illinois to get the care she needed, costing them thousands of dollars.
Though Arizona’s 1864 complete abortion ban will not go into effect, years of anti-abortion restrictions have already pushed Arizonans into similar situations. Only a few weeks ago, I had to tell a mother having an inevitable miscarriage that my hands were tied, and we could not take care of her until either her baby died, she miscarried on her own, or she developed an infection; in the meantime, all we could do was observe her in the hospital.
She asked for medications to help complete the miscarriage so she could go home to her children, but I had to tell her that wasn’t an option. She abruptly miscarried three days later, too quickly for us to initiate adequate pain medicine.
No Arizonan should be forced to bleed, suffer, and put their health and fertility at risk because of arbitrary legislative decisions made by those playing politics. No Arizonan should be forced to flee our state to get needed medical care. And no Arizona physician should worry about prison time for trying to take the best care of their patients.
Abortion bans open up complicated, nuanced, private medical decisions to black-and-white laws made by politicians with no medical knowledge. No matter how one feels personally about abortion, we nearly all agree that decisions around abortion are both deeply personal and private, and should be made by patients and trusted physicians.
The abortion bans approved by the Arizona Supreme Court and backed by extremist politicians are simply out of step with what most Arizonans believe and want for our state, and make all of our health care less safe. Extreme abortion bans in other states have driven doctors away and resulted in hospitals shutting down services for pregnant patients altogether, worsening the crucial shortage of maternity care in many parts of the country.
While the recent political interference with abortion care is chilling for the above reasons and more, not all hope is lost for Arizonans. According to a 2022 survey of Arizona voters voting in that year’s election — the first after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the right to an abortion — 61% said abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Only 6% said it should be illegal in all cases.
This November, Arizona voters have a chance to make our voices heard and to ensure that our state’s abortion laws reflect our values of privacy, autonomy and the dignity to make our own medical decisions. Thanks to a historic Arizona-led effort, we will soon get to vote on Proposition 139 to restore the protections Arizonans had under Roe v. Wade.
It will ensure that people can make their own decisions about their pregnancy with their families and their physicians and without interference by the government. It will also ensure patients, including survivors of rape and incest, and those with pregnancy complications or miscarriages, are able to get the care they need and deserve here in Arizona, without life-threatening delays.
As a native Arizonan and a physician who has dedicated my life to reproductive health care, I worry about my ability to take the best care of my patients in Arizona, and I worry about how the increasingly restrictive laws will impact the healthcare that my friends and family receive. One-hundred and sixty years after Arizona’s draconian abortion ban was instated, it’s up to us — doctors, patients, and Arizona voters — to have our voices heard in November.
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