Last week an Arizona appeals court lifted an injunction against Arizona’s 2009 Abortion Consent Act. There are four major components to the Act:

1. The abortionist must be the one reading the state-approved informed consent script, not a surrogate, and it must be 24 hours before the abortion.

2. Only doctors can abort, not nurses or midwives.

3. Aborting minors must bring a notarized parental consent form. Parents can now sue if their rights are violated.

4. Not only doctors, but also hospitals, pharmacies, and all health care professionals can opt out of committing abortions or providing emergency contraceptives for moral reasons.

No surprise, it was Planned Parenthood Arizona that originally sued for the injunction.

Planned Parenthood had a particular problem with #1.

Imagine a normal pre-op setting where the doctor says s/he is too busy or unavailable to provide information and answer questions about a patient’s upcoming surgery. It doesn’t happen.  Except at abortion mills. According to Tuscon Weekly, August 16:

Planned Parenthood has been making sure that women hear the script at least 24 hours before they get an abortion since the law was passed – but they’ve been using nurses to read the information to women over the phone. That will no longer be sufficient.

[Planned Parenthood Arizona CEO Bryan] Howard [pictured above right] says nurses have been reading the information… because Arizona already has a shortage of doctors who can provide abortion care, so adding another in-person consultation to their schedule presents a problem. For Planned Parenthood, which provides about 10,000 abortions to women annually, that would mean 10,000 new consultations.

“It wouldn’t make any sense to hire a physician to read a script, nor would a physician be willing to use her medical education to just read to patients,” Howard says.

That’s what happens when the abortion industry can’t scrounge up established community doctors to kill babies but must hire circuit riders who fly or drive in on abortion day(s), first meeting the patient when her legs are spread on the table. In no way, from no angle, is this good medicine.

Planned Parenthood also balked at #2. Imagine any other invasive surgery where a doctor doesn’t perform the surgery. It doesn’t happen. Even noninvasive RU486 abortions have many risks and sometimes result in the need for surgical abortions.

But in breaking the news yesterday that he was halting abortions at seven of its 13 clinics (only three will still commit abortions, all in the lucrative Phoenix and Tucson urban areas) Howard complained:

The basic problem, Howard said, is the requirements… leave Arizona Planned Parenthood with just six full- and part-time doctors to handle nearly 100,000 [sic] abortions a year, including a new state mandate for face-to-face doctor meetings with patients ahead of time.

“The real challenge is the shortage of physicians who are trained and who, I might also add, are willing to ensure the risk of protests from opponents of abortion,” he said….

He said a nurse practitioner in Flagstaff who has been providing nonsurgical abortions has had protesters in the driveway of her home.

So is Howard saying abortionists can’t handle home protests but nurses can? (Am posting another photo of Howard, right, because I think his pondering poses are so striking and suave.)

Also, as Cathi Herrod, president of the pro-life Center for Abortion Policy, pointed out in the aforementioned article, “[a] doctor who is trained to do a D&C for miscarriage is trained to do an abortion.”

Bottom line. The other side lies to cover up the fact its first concern is money, not the health, safety, and welfare of women.

Great job, Arizona pro-lifers!

[HT: David Schmidt of Live Action; photos via Deseret News; top photo, featuring “a statue representing women’s empowerment,” is of the Tucson PP]

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