Roberts: Here comes this year's punish-the-women abortion bill
Once again, the Center for Arizona Policy’s Cathi Herrod, doing business as the Arizona Legislature, has renewed her crusade to force more Arizona women to undergo the knife if they want an abortion.
Yep, it’s yet another bill forbidding doctors from prescribing a drug-induced abortion after the seventh week of pregnancy and to heck with what the medical community thinks.
Or what the courts think.
Nearly half of all women in Arizona who get abortions use abortion-inducing drugs such as RU-486 rather than resorting to surgery. So naturally, the Legislature (read: Herrod) has decided to put a halt to that.
Our leaders in 2012 passed a law that barred women from taking RU-486 after the seventh week of pregnancy, as outlined in FDA guidelines. Never mind that doctors have long been prescribing the abortion pill through nine weeks, saying evidence has shown it to be safe.
The Legislature (Herrod) believes it's better for women to undergo surgery than to use a less invasive alternative – one decided upon by a woman and her doctor.
Naturally, that new law was quickly put on hold by the courts, like so many of the Legislature's (Herrod's) laws. "Arizona, has presented no evidence whatsoever that the law furthers any interest in women's health,” U.S. District Court Judge William Fletcher wrote in 2014, in refusing to overturn a federal judge's injunction.
The U.S. Supreme Court without comment rejected then-Attorney General Tom Horne's bid to overturn that injunction and let the new law take effect.
Arizona anti-abortion lawmakers try again to limit medication abortions
So now comes state Sen. Kimberly Yee (read: Herrod) with a reworded version of the same bill.
"Instead of appealing it and keeping the case going for months or years on end, we're just going to clarify the law," Josh Kredit, the Center for Arizona Policy’s lawyer told The Republic’s Alia Beard Rau.
By clarification, he means basically, the same old story for women. Under Senate Bill 1324, women would no longer have access to a drug-induced abortion in the eighth or ninth week of pregnancy. Never mind if your doctor approves.
Cathi Herrod doesn't, and that's good enough for the Arizona Legislature.
Of course, SB 1324 will pass and of course, Gov. Doug Ducey will sign it. Herrod is part of Ducey's kitchen cabinet, which explains why he signed last year's voodoo bill — the one requiring doctors to counsel women that their drug-induced abortions can be reversed, despite the fact that there's no medical evidence that that's true.
And of course, there will be yet another lawsuit challenging yet another attempt by Herrod to impose her views upon the women of Arizona — never mind that most of her bills go down in flames once they reach the courts.
When it comes to defending Herrod's beliefs, money is no object.
Herrod, after all, has a limitless legal defense fund — one supplied by taxpayers.
Bills Arizona can live without:
