A Planned Parenthood clinic in Tucson started providing abortion care again Monday after nearly two months of legal limbo.
The Southern Arizona Regional Health Center, at 2255 N. Wyatt Dr., is offering abortion medications for up to 11 weeks and surgical abortions up to 18 weeks of pregnancy, the same services that were in place before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24.
“We’re really excited to be able to resume abortion care for our patients here in Arizona,” said Brittany Fonteno, CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona. “We’re committed to providing (abortion) as the legal landscape allows.”
Over the last few weeks, Fonteno said, “it’s become very clear that abortion is still legal in Arizona.”
Tucson’s Choices Women’s Center, at 5240 East Knight, has also resumed offering abortion services at this time. (To learn more about abortion providers in Arizona and around the country, patients can search online at abortionfinder.org).
During an Aug. 19 court hearing in Tucson, attorneys for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson to allow prosecutors to enforce a near total ban on abortions first enacted more than 110 years ago.
But Planned Parenthood of Arizona and the Pima County Attorney’s Office urged Johnson to allow licensed physicians to continue to perform abortions. Johnson said she will make her decision by Sept. 19.
Pima County is central to Arizona’s current reproductive rights battle because of a lawsuit that predates Roe v. Wade. In that case, Planned Parenthood sued both the Pima County Attorney’s Office and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, and obtained an injunction against the state’s long-standing abortion ban.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Brnovich asked the court in Pima County to lift the injunction, which would restore his power and that of local prosecutors to criminally charge doctors who perform abortions.
The Republican attorney general has since acknowledged that while the old, pre-Roe law is back in effect in 14 Arizona counties, the injunction continues to block his office — and the Pima County prosecutor’s office — from enforcing an abortion ban in Pima County.
Fonteno said their next goal is establishing that this precedent applies not just to Pima County but to the whole state.
“People need to be able to make their own personal decision,” she said, “without the interference of politicians.”
A critical step to resuming reproductive health care in Pima County has been making sure staff were comfortable with taking this step, Fonteno said. Many were afraid after being threatened with arrest, she said.
For the time being, Fonteno said, they will be helping patients around the state access abortion services in Tucson. There is a patient navigator program set up for people to share what they need to travel to Pima County.
Planned Parenthood has seven health-care centers in Arizona, and four were providing abortion care before the law was overturned. In late September, once a new Arizona bill becomes law, abortions will be restricted to 15 weeks and under.
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