Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email [email protected].

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/
Sign up for our newsletter

Menu

  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships
    • From the Collection

      Changing Child Care

      Illustration of a woman feeding a baby a bottle
      • 1 in 4 parents report being fired for work interruptions due to child care breakdowns

        Chabeli Carrazana · February 2
      • Washington, D.C., offers financial relief to local child care workers

        Orion Rummler · September 20
      • As climate change worsens hurricane season in Louisiana, doulas are ensuring parents can safely feed their babies

        Jessica Kutz · May 5
    • From the Collection

      Next-Gen GOP

      Illustration of a woman riding an elephant
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • A banner year for Republican women

        Amanda Becker · November 11
      • Republican women could double representation in the U.S. House

        Amanda Becker · November 4
    • From the Collection

      On The Rise

      Illustration of three women marching
      • Can Cheri Beasley build a winning coalition in North Carolina?

        Candice Norwood · October 11
      • Los Angeles has never elected a woman mayor. Karen Bass hopes to change that.

        Nadra Nittle · September 8
      • Judge J. Michelle Childs is confirmed to D.C. appeals court

        Candice Norwood · July 20
    • From the Collection

      Pandemic Within a Pandemic

      Illustration of four people marching for Black Lives Matter with coronavirus as the backdrop
      • Some LGBTQ+ people worry that the COVID-19 vaccine will affect HIV medication. It won’t.

        Orion Rummler · November 23
      • Why are more men dying from COVID? It’s a complicated story of nature vs. nurture, researchers say

        Mariel Padilla · September 22
      • Few incarcerated women were released during COVID. The ones who remain have struggled.

        Candice Norwood · August 17
    • From the Collection

      Portraits of a Pandemic

      Illustration of a woman wearing a mask and holding up the coronavirus
      • For family caregivers, COVID is a mental health crisis in the making

        Shefali Luthra · October 8
      • A new database tracks COVID-19’s effects on sex and gender

        Shefali Luthra · September 15
      • Pregnant in a pandemic: The 'perfect storm for a crisis'

        Shefali Luthra · August 25
    • From the Collection

      The 19th Explains

      People walking from many articles to one article where they can get the context they need on an issue.
      • The 19th Explains: What we know about Brittney Griner’s case and what it took to get her home

        Candice Norwood, Katherine Gilyard · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why the Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t codify same-sex marriage rights

        Kate Sosin · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why baby formula is still hard to find months after the shortage

        Mariel Padilla · December 1
    • From the Collection

      The Electability Myth

      Illustration of three women speaking at podiums
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • Stepping in after tragedy: How political wives became widow lawmakers

        Mariel Padilla · May 24
      • Do term limits help women candidates? New York could be a new testing ground

        Barbara Rodriguez · January 11
    • From the Collection

      The Impact of Aging

      A number of older people walking down a path of information.
      • From ballroom dancing to bloodshed, the older AAPI community grapples with gun control

        Nadra Nittle, Mariel Padilla · January 27
      • 'I'm planning on working until the day I die': Older women voters are worried about the future

        Mariel Padilla · June 3
      • Climate change is forcing care workers to act as first responders

        Jessica Kutz · May 31
    • From the Collection

      Voting Rights

      A series of hands reaching for ballots.
      • Connecticut voters approved early voting. Here’s how their new secretary of state wants to make it happen.

        Barbara Rodriguez · February 13
      • Women lawmakers in Minnesota are in the vanguard of the democracy movement

        Barbara Rodriguez · February 3
      • Election workers believe in our system — and want everyone else to, too

        Barbara Rodriguez, Jennifer Gerson · November 8

    View all collections

  • Explore by Topic

    • 19th Polling
    • Abortion
    • Business & Economy
    • Caregiving
    • Coronavirus
    • Education
    • Election 2020
    • Election 2022
    • Election 2024
    • Environment & Climate
    • Health
    • Immigration
    • Inside The 19th
    • Justice
    • LGBTQ+
    • Military
    • Politics
    • Press Release
    • Race
    • Sports
    • Technology

    View All Topics

Home
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th Represents Summit

Don’t miss our biggest event of 2023!

Register Today

Become a member

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Dr. Jill Gibson speaks with staff in a Planned Parenthood waiting room.
Dr. Jill Gibson, Medical director for Planned Parenthood Arizona, speaks with her staff in Tempe, Arizona in June 2022. (Matt York/AP)

Abortion

An ‘insane roller coaster’: In Arizona, abortion is legal one day and outlawed the next

The legal whiplash over which of the state's two abortion bans should take effect has left patients and providers alike unsure how to proceed.

Shefali Luthra

Health Reporter

Shefali Luthra portrait

Published

2022-10-20 05:00
5:00
October 20, 2022
am

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, almost every clinic in Arizona immediately stopped providing abortions, worried that a ban passed in 1864 might now outlaw the procedure entirely. 

Five days later, they seemed validated. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said abortion was illegal in the state, and those who provided it were subject to criminal penalties. It did not matter, he said, that the state had passed a new law just months before allowing abortions until 15 weeks of pregnancy. 

But it was only the beginning. Over the next three and a half months, the laws would bounce from court to court as different judges offered different interpretations of the right to abortion in Arizona and whether clinics could provide any abortions at all. 

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Each time a decision has been issued, it’s been difficult to gauge how long it will even have an effect.

“This has been the most insane roller coaster ride I have ever been on,” said Dr. Jill Gibson, the medical director at Planned Parenthood Arizona. “We feel like we’re constantly having whiplash.”

The uncertainty of the legal back-and-forth has destabilized abortion provision in Arizona — making it harder for clinics to retain staff, forcing patients to leave the state for care, and rendering it near impossible for people to know if they are legally allowed to get an abortion in the state. Even now, with the state’s total ban blocked, patients and providers alike are unsure how to proceed.

  • More abortion coverage
    Abortion rights protesters chant and display signs at a demonstration.
  • Kentucky is latest to test whether red states will keep voting for abortion rights
  • State abortion bans are preventing cancer patients from getting chemotherapy
  • Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s IVF experiences are informing her positions on abortion

On four separate occasions, Arizona state courts have issued new decisions on the state’s abortion laws:

A July 12 decision blocked a fetal “personhood” law that would have treated abortion as murder. A day later, clinics in the state resumed providing abortions and Brnovich filed his own suit to officially reinstate the 1864 ban. 

On September 22, a state judge ruled that the total abortion ban — which has no exceptions for cases of rape or incest — was the law of the land. Once again, clinics had to stop providing abortions in Arizona, canceling patients’ appointments and redirecting them to clinics in California, New Mexico and Nevada. An appeals court stepped in once again October 6, issuing a different ruling: Actually, the state’s total abortion ban should be blocked while it was challenged in court. Now, abortion in Arizona would instead be banned for people at 15 weeks and later in pregnancy — a significant restriction, but far less onerous than the law that had been enforced the past two weeks.

Clinics are already feeling the impact of their brief closures. Multiple clinic leaders told The 19th they lost staff during the periods when they couldn’t provide abortions, nurses and administrative personnel who worried that losing abortion services could spell longer-term trouble for the clinics. Even now, the looming threat of another ban is still a factor driving clinic employees to seek other work.  

But the impact has been most heightened for patients — many of whom do not know what is legal until they receive a call from the clinic saying their abortion had to be canceled.

“Arizona has really been in a state of chaos since June. It’s really felt like every two weeks the law switches on us,” said Eloisa Lopez, executive director of the Abortion Fund of Arizona. “The patients are the last people to understand what’s happening.” 

When all abortions were outlawed, Dr. Gabriella Goodrick, who owns Phoenix-based Camelback Family Planning, set up a telemedicine program for patients to get medication abortion pills from California. She would talk patients through the procedure, and then set them up for a virtual appointment with a doctor she worked with two hours away, just across the Arizona-California border. 

That doctor would get medication abortion pills, known as mifepristone and misoprostol, mailed to a California post office, where patients could pick them up, though they were advised to take both pills in the state of California — a stipulation that could require multiple trips to the border or an overnight stay. (Lawyers aren’t sure whether a state abortion ban could apply to someone taking the misoprostol, which is advised to be administered 24 hours after mifepristone.)

About 15 of her patients used that service, she estimates. If the state’s abortion ban is outlawed, she plans to resuscitate that program. 

Abortion rights protesters hold signs that read "my body my choice" and "no uterus no opinion" during a demonstration near the Tuscon Federal Courthouse.
Abortion rights protesters rally at the Tucson Federal Courthouse in Tucson, Arizona in July 2022. (SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images)

Legally, it’s not clear what comes next. The state could ask the Arizona Supreme Court to reinstate the state’s total abortion ban, but when that might happen is hard to know. State lawmakers could repeal its 1864 ban, but the legislature is not in session and has not come back to undo the prohibition. (Republicans currently hold majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, but by very narrow margins.)

For now, providers worry, patients are falling through the cracks. Some had appointments canceled when abortion was outlawed and may not have learned that the procedure is legal once again. Others weren’t able to pull together the money, time off work or child care to make another journey back. Only six clinics provide abortion in Arizona, and all are in Phoenix or Tuscon.

Other patients are simply too nervous now that they’ve seen how quickly the laws have changed.

“A lot of patients gave up. They’re scared,” Goodrick said. “Some are worried. Is it illegal? Is it going to change tomorrow?”

She does her best to reassure patients, telling them that she thinks abortion will remain legal in the state for at least a few weeks. But when they ask her if she’s sure — how she knows — she has to tell them she isn’t.

That fear is already pushing some patients to keep going out of state for abortions, even if they could theoretically get them in Arizona, Gibson said. It’s a journey that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on where people travel. For many, Las Vegas and Los Angeles are the closest options.

But even with some patients going out of state, clinics are struggling to take care of those who remain. Since the state’s total ban has been lifted, her clinic has been barraged by patients, she said. Two weeks’ worth of appointments were booked in 48 hours. Gibson has spent hours on the phone trying to recruit more doctors to come in and take shifts providing abortions — she needs more staff to account for all the patients they’re seeing. 

Stories by experienced reporters you can trust and relate to.

Delivered directly to your inbox every weekday.

Please check your email to confirm your subscription!

Submitting…

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please try again later.

For some patients, even two weeks feels too long to wait, since the staff can’t guarantee abortion will still be legal. And the burden of going to California is particularly onerous on patients who are undocumented — almost 4 percent of Arizona residents, per 2016 Census data — as well as those who have lower incomes or who are minors.  

One woman, who couldn’t get an appointment for a week and a half, elected to travel to another state where she had family, and where she knew abortion wasn’t about to be outlawed.

“You’re going for a major life-changing event,” Gibson said. “You want to know for certainty that you can get it.”

Even the few weeks without abortion access have been exceptionally difficult to witness, she said. Each time a ban has come back, she’s had to call patients and cancel their appointments. She’s spoken with thousands of pregnant patients who were desperate to get an abortion. There were so many people she couldn’t help. One, who came a week before Arizona’s total ban was lifted, was a 21-year-old nursing student who became pregnant after a condom broke and the Plan B pill failed.

“We were, like, ‘Let’s think through your options,’” Gibson said. “And she looked at me and said, ‘I don’t have options.’”

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

The 19th Represents Summit

Don’t miss our biggest event of 2023!

Register Today

Become a member

Up Next

Johnny Wilson, an employee at the Mecklenburg County Health Department wearing a black shirt with a vaccine message, speaks with an individual about the Monkeypox vaccine at the 2022 Charlotte Pride Festival in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina on August 20, 2022.

Health

Monkeypox vaccines still aren’t reaching Black Americans

Vaccine access is just one of several disparities that leave queer Black men at a disadvantage in their ability to keep the virus at bay.

Read the Story

The 19th
The 19th is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our stories are free to republish in accordance with these guidelines.

  • Donate
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Search
  • Jobs
  • Fellowships
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Community Guidelines
  • Membership
  • Membership FAQ
  • Major Gifts
  • Sponsorship
  • Privacy
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram