State Rep. Kimberly Yee Sneaks Her Dead Abortion Bill Into Senate

Here’s a feature of the Arizona Legislature that Republican state Rep. Kimberly Yee is happy about — how her bill regulating contracts between the state and private attorneys, passed by the House a month a go, went to the Senate and magically turned into her abortion bill that was previously killed in committee.

That’s the beauty of a strike-everything amendment, as Sen. Steve Yarbrough’s amendment to replace every word of House Bill 2036 with the exact language of Yee’s H.B. 2838, which was stalled in its first committee assignment.

The language of Yee’s bill would ban abortions of fetuses more than 20 weeks old, based on the “fetal pain” concept.

The jury’s still out on whether that’s actually a fact.

Thanks to a 6-2 Senate Judiciary Committee vote yesterday, the new H.B. 2036, if passed by the Senate, heads back to the House for a vote without those pesky committees.

The amendment may have stayed under the radar for a bit longer were it not for Planned Parenthood Arizona, which sent out an alert of the replacement language.

According to Planned Parenthood, an ob-gyn testified before the House Health Committee — where the bill initially stalled — claiming the bill could put “doctors at risk of prosecution and punitive unprofessional conduct censure” since the accuracy of gestational age isn’t quite exact.

“Representative Kimberly Yee, the bill’s sponsor, is asking the state to force physicians to provide bad medicine to Arizona women,” Michelle Steinberg, Planned Parenthood Arizona’s director of public policy, says in a statement. “This is not about protecting women; this is about politicians and extreme lobbying groups pushing their own agenda.”

You can find Yarbrough’s amendment to the bill by clicking here, and the Senate fact sheet on the amendment by clicking here.