Arizona Moves Toward Curbing Abortion Rights

PHOENIX, AZ — Arizona has made a move toward a potentially significant reduction in abortion rights.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to approve SB 1164, which would make it a felony to receive an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, according to Arizona Public Media. The measure passed 5-3, with the Democrats on the committee voting against it.

Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, who sponsored the legislation, and many others who spoke in favor of it are against abortion at any stage, according to reporting from the Arizona Capitol Times. But they felt they had an opportunity to align Arizona with a 15-week ban approved by the state legislature of Mississippi that is currently in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, Arizona Public Media Reported.

Those who spoke out against the bill argued that it wouldn't stop abortions, only make them less accessible and unsafe.

Next, the bill will go in front of the full Arizona State Senate.

With both chambers of the Arizona State Legislature under Republican control, and with a history of passing measures aimed at restricting abortion, SB 1164 has a good chance of being approved by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey.

Just last year Ducey joined more than 200 Republican governors, lawmakers and officials from across the nation to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe V. Wade, the 1973 case that made abortion legal until a fetus reaches viability, according to the Arizona Republic.

Barto is no stranger to proposing laws aimed at restricting abortion. In 2021, Barto sponsored a bill that would have made it a felony for a doctor to end a pregnancy because of a genetic abnormality in the fetus, the Associated Press reported. That measure failed to pass the state Senate.