When voters in Arizona prepare their choices on Election Day this year, they will be able to consult a state-issued pamphlet explaining what the various ballot initiatives are all about.
One of those issues is an expansion of legal access to abortion. An amendment would allow abortions until an embryo or fetus was able to survive outside the womb, with exceptions allowing abortions past 24 weeks to save a mother’s life or protect her physical or mental health. It would establish a “fundamental” right to abortion.
But the brochure that voters will receive in the mail will refer to an embryo or fetus as an “unborn human being.”
On August 14, the Arizona Supreme Court overruled a lower court that said the language violates state law requiring “impartial” language. In a brief order the high court said the language “substantially complies” with the requirement for impartiality.
The ballot measure’s backers contend that the phrase “unborn human being” is neither impartial nor objective.
“We are deeply disappointed in this ruling, but will not be deterred from doing everything in our power to communicate to voters the truth of the Arizona Abortion Access Act and why it’s critical to vote YES to restore and protect access to abortion care this fall,” the group, Arizona for Abortion Access, said in a statement.
But Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, a Republican who co-chairs the panel that drafted the disputed language, said the disputed words are intended to help voters understand the current law.
“The Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling is correct,” Toma said.
Earlier this year, following the demise of Roe v. Wade, the Arizona Supreme Court issued an opinion to allow the pre-Roe statute prohibiting most abortions from the moment of conception to become law. But the legislature quickly moved to repeal this law, leaving the state with a 15-week abortion ban that has limited exceptions for the health and life of the mother.
The state’s attorney general’s office published an informational page on its website in an effort to help people keep track of the changes. It explains that currently, the term “abortion” refers to “the use of any means to terminate the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman with knowledge that the termination by those means will cause, with reasonable likelihood, the death of the unborn child.”
Support for "extreme" measure
Although the words “unborn human being” will appear in the pamphlet, they will not be on the ballot itself, said the secretary of state’s office, which determines what gets printed on the ballot, said The Associated Press.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, announced last week that his office had gathered a record number of signatures to put the abortion question on the November ballot.
Polls show that most Arizona voters support the abortion measure.
The Arizona Catholic Conference calls the ballot initiative “extreme,” saying it “threatens to undermine almost all of Arizona’s common sense pro-life laws including safeguards that are currently in place at abortion clinics, parental consent for girls, and late-term abortion of viable preborn children.”
The state's bishops “continue to encourage the faithful to work and pray for its ultimate defeat,” said the conference.
