In the run-up to the Supreme Court's decision on the abortion rights initiative, court filings are heating up

Arizona Right to Life lost his lawsuit to challenge the inclusion of the measure in the ballot before a court of first instance, but the state's highest court has not yet made a decision in the appeal process.

The anti-abortion group claimed that the summary of the Arizona Abortion Access Act shown to the more than 800,000 supporters who signed petitions to put the bill on the ballot was misleading and for that reason it should be excluded from the ballot this fall.

On Monday, the Arizona Secretary of State’s office confirmed that around 570,000 of these signatures were valid, which is more than enough to get on the ballot.

On appeal, Arizona Right to Life argued that the summary shown to petition signers was misleading because it included the phrase “health care provider,” when the full text of the statute refers to the “treating health care provider” when describing who has the authority to determine that an abortion is necessary despite fetal viability.

The anti-abortion group argued that the omission of the word “treatment” from the summary gave the impression to signatories of the petition that the decision was being made by someone other than an abortion doctor.

The trial court judge disagreed.

Other groups and elected officials also gathered in court on Friday to defend the abortion rights measure. joint submissionSave our Schools Arizona and the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center argued that if the court gave credence to the argument that omitting an “unimportant adjective” means the description is impermissibly misleading, the justices would make the standard “so burdensome and unattainable that no initiative could withstand judicial scrutiny.”

SOS Arizona is an advocacy organization for public schools and BISC is a nonprofit organization that provides stakeholders with information about the initiative process.

“The microscopic details of the (Arizona Right to Life) demands would make compliance impossible and stifle the right of initiative,” wrote a lawyer for both groups, Daniel Adelman, in the official brief.

Adelman also questioned Arizona Right to Life's argument that the summary should have included details about the Abortion Access Act's potential impact on existing abortion regulations.

According to current state law, the procedure is prohibited after the 15th week of pregnancy; exceptions are only permitted if the mother's life must be saved.

“No proponent could predict and summarize in 200 words what past and future laws would hold up while also explaining the actual provisions of the measure,” Adelman wrote. “And attempting such an exercise could result in a misleading description should a court disagree with how proponents applied the test to a particular regulation.”

State law requires that the summaries shown to potential petition signers include all of the substantive provisions of the ballot proposal, but not its potential impact on existing law, Adelman stressed.

But Arizona Right to Life argued in its Submission on Friday that one of the main provisions of the law is to eliminate the current standard of an “objective medical examination” to determine whether an abortion is justified and replace it with a “good faith judgment” of the treating health care provider.

“Voters are being asked – unwittingly – to allow medical decisions about abortion based solely on the 'good faith' decision of abortion doctors who benefit from a decision that results in abortion,” wrote Jennifer Wright, a Right to Life attorney.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and the Society of Family Planning contradicted these allegations in her own court filing in support of the Arizona Abortion Access Act.

Karin Aldama, an attorney for the medical societies and the abortion research group, wrote that Arizona Right to Life's allegations against abortion providers lack evidence and are “not based on the realities of medical care and ethics.”

“Basic principles of medical ethics require that all clinicians, regardless of the type of care they provide, base their medical judgments on the 'best interests of the patient' rather than on personal gain,” Aldama wrote.

The medical societies also argued that anti-abortion activists had wrongly attempted to convince the court that doctors who perform abortions are subject to different ethical standards than other health care providers.

“Plaintiff's attempt to stigmatize the provision of essential health care and to single out and disparage the health care professionals who provide that care – as if they were a different class of medical professionals or as if they were prone to conduct that would neglect the welfare of patients in favor of personal gain – lacks any factual basis, is contrary to the legal and ethical obligations of medical professionals, is harmful to the citizens of Arizona, and should be rejected by this Court,” Aldama wrote.

Responding to the medical associations' allegations, Arizona Right to Life wrote Friday that medical providers typically do not perform medical procedures for free and that financial gain can influence their decision-making.

In the same motion, the anti-abortion organization reiterated its claim that the summary shown to the petition's signatories was misleading because it did not inform them that the petition's “main provision” would “eradicate” existing abortion laws.

“The basic thrust is to completely deregulate abortion and ultimately repeal any laws in Arizona that would challenge a woman's decision to abort her child,” Wright wrote.

A Thursday Filing with court In support of Arizona Right to Life's argument, state Rep. Barbara Parker and U.S. Congressman Andy Biggs (both Republicans) elaborated on the organization's claims about the potential impact of the constitutional changes the measure would bring.

Her lawyers, Veronica Lucero, and Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin of Scottsdale, told the court that the bill should be excluded from the vote because its description did not inform the signatories that the law would deprive the courts of the traditional control they exercise over fundamental rights laws.

Lucero and Kolodin argued that this change was a “major provision” of the Abortion Access Act and therefore should have been included in the summary.

“This is a profound change in the way Arizona courts analyze and interpret the law when it comes to fundamental rights, which include our most precious and fundamental individual freedoms, and this transformation is clearly one of the 'most important, consequential and fundamental features of the initiative,'” they wrote.

The Arizona Abortion Access Act would enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution and prohibit the state from passing or enforcing laws denying or restricting that right before the fetus is viable unless the state has a compelling interest in doing so.

The law further specifies that the compelling public interest must be solely for the purpose of improving or preserving the health of the person seeking an abortion and must not interfere with that person's autonomous decision-making.

Lucero and Kolodin argued that this change should have been included in the summary because this type of limitation on a compelling government interest does not apply to other fundamental rights and represents a difference in how the courts treat abortion law.

“This interest would override any compelling interest the government may have in ensuring that a health care provider has the religious freedom not to perform an abortion,” they wrote. “It is a material failure to the public that the law will override such an interest, because courts will not be able to elevate the fundamental right to religious freedom above the fundamental right to abortion.”

The Arizona Supreme Court is expected to rule on the appeal before Aug. 22, the deadline for printing ballots in some counties.

In their written submissions to the court, the medical societies emphasized the importance of access to abortion as part of standard medical care.

“Access to health care should not be a game of ping-pong. Access to the full spectrum of medical care is critical to the health, safety, and well-being of people,” Aldama wrote. “The health and well-being of people and communities are at risk when health care professionals are unable to provide the medical care patients need without legislative interference in the practice of medicine.”