Arizona State Supreme Court discusses abortion law

The Arizona State Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments Tuesday over whether a centuries-old near-total abortion ban will be reinstated. Currently, abortion is banned at 15 weeks or later in Arizona. Patients are required to make two appointments, the first for an in-person counseling session and the second at least 24 hours later for the abortion.

We spoke with Andy Gaona, Legal Counsel for Planned Parenthood Arizona, for more details.

“There is a fundamental conflict between an old, general law that criminalizes a certain class of conduct here performing an abortion, and a newer, more specific law that allows doctors to perform an abortion up to 15 weeks,” Gaona said, stating that this is the argument that was made in front of the judges and the one that has been made all along.

When there are two statues that conflict, courts have to harmonize those two statutes, Gaona said. This is what the Court of Appeals did in 2022 under which physicians who comply with this law cannot be prosecuted under the territorial ban. Under this harmonization, the territorial ban can be enforced against anyone who is not a physician who procures a miscarriage, according to Gaona.

Many argued that it was illegal prior to Roe v. Wade, and it should be illegal again to the overturning of Roe.

“My primary response to that is that is ultimately a policy question for the policy-making branches of government to decide,” Gaona said. “If the legislature truly wanted the territorial ban to be resurrected in its entirety and to supersede all of the legislature’s enactments regulating abortion over the past 50 years, then it should have done so clearly and expressly.”

The legislature did not do this, according to Gaona, because they did not have the votes.