The Planned Parenthood Action Fund and unions are running ads in Arizona promoting Proposition 139, the Right to Abortion Initiative. Funded also by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the ads contain misleading language about Arizona’s current law, such as stating abortion is illegal.
An ad titled “Waiting” states twice that there is a ban on abortion in Arizona. However, state law currently permits abortions up until the 15th week. Abortion hasn’t been illegal in the state for many years. After the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, a judge suspended Arizona’s old law prohibiting most abortions. The Arizona Legislature then passed a law permanently rescinding the law, leaving in place the new 15-week law enacted in 2022.
A woman’s voice narrates regarding the current law, “It forces women who are miscarried or having complications to wait, wait until a medical emergency.”
There is nothing in the law stating that doctors can’t assist women with miscarriages or medical complications related to pregnancy or abortion. It only prohibits actual abortions after 15 weeks. The law penalizes the doctor, not the mother.
Pro-abortion advocates claim that women died from botched abortions in states that passed more restrictive abortion laws after Roe v. Wade was reversed, since they were not allowed to receive care. However, these allegations have been refuted.
In Georgia, they claimed a mother died as a result of the state’s 2022 abortion law, which banned abortions after six weeks (the law was struck down by a judge a few days ago). Amber Nicole Thurman died in 2022 from infection following a chemical abortion.
Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said that Thurman drove to North Carolina to obtain an abortion at nine weeks pregnant. Francis said during an interview on Fox News that “an employee of the clinic gave her the high-risk abortion drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, and she took those drugs and, unfortunately, four to five days later, she went to her local hospital because she got heavy bleeding. She was vomiting blood.”
Francis said the hospital she went to for treatment failed to recognize the difference between sepsis and an incomplete abortion, which “even a first-year resident would be able to” distinguish. Instead of giving her “an immediate D&C and then antibiotics,” they “waited 20 hours before they took her to the operating room.” Francis said it was a mistake the hospital made that had nothing to do with the law.
