Restricting abortions by geography and income
by David Safier
Planned Parenthood Arizona put out a Media Release about HB2416, the latest bill to make abortion, a legal medical procedure, increasingly difficult to obtain.
Upon signing HB 2416 into law, Governor Brewer and bill supporters have laid the foundation to further reduce access to abortion care in Arizona, a development that will particularly hit low-income and rural women the hardest.
Among the many impediments to abortion care imposed in this sweeping package of regulation – the second such bill adopted by the legislature’s anti-abortion majority in the past two years – a particularly damaging and less-than-honest provision redefines abortion in a way that requires the dispensing and taking of the abortion pill to be regulated as though it were surgery. This change will significantly reduce the kinds of health care professionals who can dispense this medication, creating the likelihood that abortion services in rural communities will cease.
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With access limited, low-income and rural women will likely delay their care, pushing them to have more invasive abortions later in their pregnancy and possibly increasing the number of surgical abortions in Arizona.
“Under the disguise of making a law that makes women safe, HB 2416 will actually be more dangerous for rural, low-income women, delaying care and making access difficult,” said Bryan Howard, CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona. “Claiming to be more knowledgeable than trained medical professionals and their licensing boards, the legislature has once again put themselves between patients and their doctors.”
Read the entire media release after the jump.