Fearing criminal charges, clinics across Arizona have stopped providing abortions
Nearly all abortion clinics in Arizona stopped providing those services Friday in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
All Planned Parenthood Arizona locations and at least three private Phoenix clinics and one Tucson clinic confirmed they were pausing all abortion care in the wake of Friday's ruling.
Eight of Arizona's nine licensed abortion providers said Friday they had stopped doing abortions, and the status of the other clinic was unclear.
The pause on abortions has resulted in some difficult conversations with patients, said Dr. Jill Gibson, medical director for Planned Parenthood Arizona, which had to increase security both leading up to and following the court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
"Today is a devastating day for all our patients in Arizona," Gibson said. "My heart honestly is breaking because this decision will cause immense suffering for women and for their families. We will see desperation. ... Our patients will now have to go to centers that are out of state."
The Planned Parenthood pause applies to all abortions, both medication and surgical, she said.
A medication abortion, sometimes referred to as the abortion pill, or abortion pills, is a two-drug combination for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy that accounts for more than half of abortions in the U.S. and in Arizona.
Phoenix-based Family Planning Associates Medical Group is "temporarily suspending" all abortions regardless of gestational age "while we assess the continued legality of abortion in Arizona," according to its website.
Dr. Paul Isaacson said the office's decision to suspend services may have resulted in about 20 canceled abortion appointments on Friday — "that would be typical" — but that it was the clinic's "safest option."
In Arizona, the legality of abortion after the ruling is uncertain.
Phoenix-based Camelback Family Planning had halted abortion services Friday, too, owner and medical director Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick confirmed. Desert Star Family Planning had similarly stopped all abortion care on Friday, Dr. DeShawn Taylor, the founder and obstetrician/gynecologist, told The Arizona Republic.
"The laws are confusing and contradictory. They have criminal penalties attached to them, so the safest thing for a provider like me to do is pause services right now until all of this becomes more clear," Taylor said.
Tucson-based Choices Women's Center posted a notice on its website Friday that says because of the Supreme Court ruling, "we have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend abortion services until we receive more clarity on the extent to which we can provide abortion services legally (if at all) in the State of Arizona."
Abortion laws: What is the law for abortions in Arizona now?
'The criminal threat is really high right now'
Arizona patients are going to begin finding out they can't get an abortion in the state, said Eloisa Lopez, executive director of the Abortion Fund of Arizona and Pro-Choice Arizona.
"The laws are so confusing and multilayered. ... We also have really aggressive people in power who could prosecute and claim that abortion is not legal," Lopez said.
"The criminal threat is really high right now and providers are not going to take that risk and rightfully so, but this is not what we all were planning for our state."
The state has two laws on the books banning abortion, one that dates to pre-statehood and another brand new one. It is unclear which ban will prevail.
The newest ban prohibits abortion at 15 weeks, except in cases to save the mother's life. It is supposed to take effect 90 days after the state Legislature adjourns, which could happen in the next week.
Violating physicians would face potential felony charges and loss of their professional licenses.
The old ban criminalizes helping someone access abortion, except to save the mother's life, and calls for a mandatory prison sentence of two to five years for violators.
"Shameful anti-abortion lawmakers have planned for this very day and done everything they can to create chaos so that Arizonans are confused, scared and unsure how to exercise their rights," said Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood Arizona.
"The Supreme Court has abandoned patients today and anti-abortion lawmakers have created unnecessary confusion. ... We are being forced by the Supreme Court and politicians in this state to deny patient care right now. As a result of our state's legal landscape, we are pausing abortion services at Planned Parenthood clinics in Arizona."
Planned Parenthood clinics handled 41% of abortions in Arizona in 2020, which is the most recently-available data. Fonteno emphasized that Planned Parenthood in Arizona is "not going away" and will continue providing health care.
"We will always be here for our patients and providers, fighting every step of the way for the right to receive the essential sexual and reproductive health care they need," she said.
Lopez said abortion rights advocates in the state are still learning what is legal in terms of getting resources and education to patients.
"Some of these pre-Roe laws also prohibited advertising and referring," she said. "We're working with legal counsel to better understand, but until things play out a little more, everything is very unclear as to what kind of guidance or resources or education would be criminal activity. ... It's really devastating for all of us."
'There are tears'
"I feel like I don't recognize this as my country anymore," said Isaacson, who has provided abortion services in the Valley since 2004.
"Everybody is sad," he said of the mood in the office Friday morning. "There are tears. I met another doctor who has nothing to do with women's health care walking in from the parking lot into our office building and she was in tears over this. Our staff (is) equally sad this morning and facing potential loss of their jobs."
Gibson, the Planned Parenthood Arizona medical director, said abortion is a human right and there will always be a need for it.
"The Supreme Court's decision simply now makes an extremely safe and normal procedure inaccessible for so many people," she said. "The impact of today's decision will be felt the hardest by Arizonans who already face discriminatory and systemic obstacles to health care, particularly our Black and indigenous, and communities of color, people with disabilities, people who live far from the city — young people, poor people, undocumented people."
Unlike at least 13 other states, including Texas and Utah, Arizona does not have a "trigger law" that instantly made abortion illegal when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
As a result, with Roe gone, it likely will be up to individual clinicians in Arizona to choose how they proceed in the immediate aftermath, unless the Arizona courts or the state Legislature take quick action, which is possible.
8 of 9 licensed providers in AZ had halted abortion care Friday
Arizona has nine licensed abortion providers, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. The providers are concentrated in metro areas, with six in the Phoenix area, two in Tucson and one in Flagstaff. Twelve of Arizona's 15 counties do not have any abortion providers, the latest state information shows.
As of Friday, eight of the nine providers were known to have halted abortions.
During the 2020 reporting year, the total number of reported abortions performed in Arizona was 13,273, compared with 13,097 in 2019, the state's most recent abortion report says.
Dr. Laura Mercer, a Phoenix obstetrician/gynecologist, said Friday during a web briefing that the status of abortion law in Arizona is so unclear that physicians don't even know exactly what they can and can't do in terms of providing abortions to save the life of a pregnant individual.
Physicians in Arizona are in a "waiting game" as they wait for leaders in the state to provide direction on what laws are in effect and how those laws will be interpreted, she said.
"What we think now is it would be safe to perform an abortion in order to save the life of a pregnant person; however, what's not defined is how close to death does that person need to be before we are allowed to intervene," said Mercer, who is chair of the Arizona Section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
"We may be seeing people whose lives are put into danger more than they need to be because we are really waiting for that unequivocal 'they are about to die' before we do anything. And that is very scary."
The Arizona Alliance for Community Health Centers on Friday issued a statement of concern that the decision could exacerbate an existing health care worker shortage in Arizona.
"While there are differing opinions, the critical shortage of healthcare providers in Arizona may intensify if providers, especially primary care and obstetrician/gynecologists, choose to leave the state in opposition of the law’s limitation on access to care," the statement says.
"For rural communities, the impact may be greater if communities lose their already limited number of primary care providers."
The Maricopa County Medical Society issued a statement Friday that said the ruling may increase maternal mortality, because timely and safe abortion care will become less available.
"The decision may especially impact minorities and low-income populations who cannot travel or otherwise access necessary procedures," the statement says.
Republic reporters Gregory Svirnovskiy and Ray Stern contributed to this article.
Reach the reporter at Stephanie.Innes@gannett.com or at 602-444-8369. Follow her on Twitter @stephanieinnes.
Reach reporter Taylor Seely at tseely@arizonarepublic.com or 480-476-6116. Follow her on Twitter @taylorseely95 or Instagram @taylor.azc.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Clinics across Arizona have stopped providing abortions
