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Two bizarre/completely unnecessary bills regarding abortion go before the full House in the Arizona Legislature today.
Last week, the House gave initial approval to a bill that would require women getting an abortion to sign a document promising they aren’t aborting the pregnancy based on sex, and another promising they aren’t aborting their pregnancy based on race. Under the proposed law, anyone caught doing so could be slapped with a class-three felony.
The bill is the product of Representative Steve Montenegro, who, as we’ve pointed out in prior posts, seems to think he represents a district in China — where aborting babies based on sex or race might actually be a problem.
However, as we learned a few weeks ago, there’s no evidence suggesting women
getting abortions for either of those reasons is even a problem in
Arizona.
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“There is no indication that this is even an issue,” Planned Parenthood Arizona spokeswoman Cynde Cerf told New Times at the time.
The other bill, HB 2416, forces abortion doctors to offer patients the opportunity to look at ultrasound images of the fetus — a move to basically try to scare women out of having an abortion. It also adds stiffer regulations to the early abortion-by-pill that would subject the procedure to the same regulations as surgical abortion.
Doing so, officials from Planned Parenthood say, would block access of early-term abortions to women living in rural communities. The group says that by preventing early-term abortions by over-regulating the pillwill lead to more late-term, potentially riskier abortions.
Check back to Valley Fever throughout the day for updates.
