PHOENIX โ State lawmakers launched a three-pronged attack on abortions and abortion providers Wednesday, seeking to ban fetal research, limit medication abortions and cut off the access of Planned Parenthood to payroll deductions by state employees.
The most far-reaching measure would impose a comprehensive prohibition on the use of any human fetus or embryo in any research, experimentation, study or transplanting. The only exceptions would be for diagnostic purposes to preserve the life of mother or the fetus, or for a pathological study to determine the cause of death.
SB 1474, approved on a 4-3 party-line vote by the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, also makes it a crime to knowingly โsell, transfer, distribute, give away, accept, use or attempt to use any human fetus or embryo or any part, organ or fluid of the human fetus or embryo resulting from an abortion.โ
Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, said the legislation is in response to the undercover videos that emerged last year that purport to show the trafficking of aborted fetuses and body parts, videos she said โshocked the soul.โ Those videos appeared to show Planned Parenthood employees discussing how fetuses were aborted in ways to preserve the organs and negotiating sales prices.
โThat revealed a side to the abortion industry most Americans didnโt know about,โ she said.
House Minority Leader Katie Hobbs said she, too, was shocked by the videos โ but not in the same way as Barto.
โThis is not happening,โ the Phoenix Democrat said.
โThe videos have been discredited by an independent forensic analysis that showed numerous inaccuracies and misleading claims, false claims,โ Hobbs said. And she said investigations of Planned Parenthood in several states have cleared the organization of any wrongdoing.
None of this affects Planned Parenthood here, which says it does not do fetal donations.
Medication abortions
Separately, the same panel voted to restrict the use of RU-486, technically known as mifepristone, for medication abortions.
In 2012, lawmakers said it could be used only in accordance with the labeling approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And that allows the drug to be used only for the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood, which uses the drug up through nine weeks, filed suit. And last year a state judge voided the law, saying the state could not make its law dependent on changeable FDA restrictions.
SB 1324 is designed to get around that by saying the drug can be used only as the FDA allowed it at the end of last year.
But Bryan Howard, president of Planned Parenthood Arizona, said thatโs even worse: It would lock Arizona doctors into a seven-week limit even if the FDA changes its protocols.
Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, said the FDA protocol is the safest for women. โOnce again, abortion providers have demonstrated they are more concerned with their bottom line than with the health and safety of women,โ she said.
But Dr. Ilana Addis, an obstetrician and gynecologist, said the FDA protocol is outdated and pointed out the agency specifically allows โoff-labelโ use of the drug if itโs considered safe.
Even if the measure becomes law, it faces other legal hurdles.
In 2014, a federal appeals court blocked enforcement of the law, saying it โsubstantially burdenedโ the legal right of women to terminate a pregnancy.
Payroll deductions
The third measure, SB 1485, is aimed at the State Employees Charitable Campaign, which allows payroll deductions for dozens of charities. It would exclude any organization that performs elective abortions.
Gov. Doug Ducey effectively imposed such a ban administratively after the emergence of the videos last year, ejecting Planned Parenthood from the campaign in which it had been a part for years. This would put it in law.
