Kirsten Engel and Regina Romero: We Will Fight for Access to Abortion

“I will protect our fundamental freedom to make our own reproductive healthcare decisions. I will fight for access to abortion. The 2024 election is critical. Reproductive freedom is absolutely on the ballot here in Congressional District 6,” said Kirsten Engel, the Democrat seeking election to US Congress in CD6. Speaking at an abortion roundtable at Planned Parenthood in Tucson.

“The contrast between myself and my opponent could not be more stark. In Congress I will protect our freedom to make our own reproductive healthcare decisions. My opponent will not. He will give it away to politicians to make these decisions for us. It’s that simple. It’s a choice, and I think most Arizonans know where they stand on this issue.”

Engel spoke along with four other Democratic women leaders at an abortion roundtable at Planned Parenthood in Tucson.

Engel was joined on the panel by fellow Democrats:

• Tucson Mayor Regina Romero. “Without the right to bodily autonomy, what do we have? It affects our body and should be no one’s issue but our own. It’s about controlling our bodies. Whatever services we need should be our own decision,” she said.

• State Representative Nancy Gutierrez from LD18. [MAGA Congressman] “Juan Ciscomani cheered at the Dobbs decision. It made me think back to that day we marched because we were angry and scared. And that’s why this is important to me because I’m angry and afraid that my young adult daughters don’t have the rights that I have.”

• Adelita Grijalva, Chair of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. “I am the mom of my daughter Adelina, and it scares me to think that she has less rights than my mom did. That is such a fundamental right that she no longer has and is something that we absolutely have to fight for. We have an opportunity to talk to a lot of young people, and this is an issue that is really important to them, because not only is access to reproductive health decisions important, but you have to get parental permission for any inquiry about your health when you’re a minor. And that is so scary because some of us don’t have parents that are easy to talk to.”

• Amalia Luxardo, the Chief Executive Officer of the Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona. “I work in partnership with our leaders and organizations like Planned Parenthood to make sure that Arizonans have access to abortion. I was also horrified when the Supreme Court Dobbs actually came down while I was in the middle of my maternity leave. To have returned with fewer rights than I had when I first left was incredibly disheartening.”

Dobbs ruling: A slap across the face

Engel said, “I’m choking up just thinking about going into my daughter’s room and talking to her the day that the Dobbs decision came down and sitting on the bed and talking to her, and what we talked about is how it felt like. Just this huge slap across the face, like you’re not in charge, and it just felt very disrespectful and dismissive.

“There’s really no other healthcare decision that we regulate, and we let politicians make these kinds of decisions, taking away that privacy, right? Within that realm of privacy, we can talk to our doctors, we can talk to our minister, our rabbi, and our family members. Now that the door has been opened, women will be more likely to fall into poverty. Doctors may be subject to criminal sanctions as a result of bringing back the 1864 law.”

Mayor Romero added, “When we heard about the leak of the Dobbs decision, my first reaction was lots of anger. We’ve been having this conversation for over a century in this country. But Roe v. Wade really made the right to privacy a constitutional right to people for who can get pregnant.”

“I felt a lot of anger, and it felt as though we had gone back a hundred years in terms of our rights. For me, it’s about that particular very basic right for a person to make their own decision.

Tucson ordinance

I did what I can as a mayor of Tucson, which was to bring in our city manager, our city attorney, and our chief of police. We put together an ordinance that passed unanimously, even before the Supreme Court handed down Dobbs. It was the leak [of the Dobbs ruling] that made us act. And we passed an ordinance unanimously, basically supporting the chief in prioritizing his work and not arresting medical care providers.

Tucson’s Mayor and Council approved a resolution on June 7, 2022, to protect abortion rights by revising Tucson Police Department general orders: Resolution No. 23477 relating to reproductive Health Care, declaring the Mayor and Council’s opposition to the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization; denouncing Senate Bill 1164 and other provisions of Arizona Law Criminalizing Abortion; supporting the Constitutional Rights of pregnant persons including their access to reproductive Health Care and Abortions; supporting and authorizing revisions to the Tucson Police Department’s general orders; and declaring an emergency.

“If I’m pissed off about something or extremely happy about something or know that something needs to happen, it’s marching, rallying, speaking up — but also doing something about it, a tangible action,” Romero said.

Grijalva said, “Don’t you find it fascinating who is talking about this issue, specifically [the Republican] party that wants the government to stay out of their business?

“They’re not interested unless you are a person who’s pregnant, then all of a sudden, we need all of their input to decide what we’re going to do with our own bodies.”

Engel agreed, saying, “I just think in our society, you go to the hospital, and nobody can do anything to your body without you filing a consent. That is the way we are built on that issue of you have the control, and now look what they’ve done.”

“To me, what is most frustrating because it’s the party that says the government needs to stay out of our business. Don’t mask. Don’t tell me to wear a mask. Don’t tell me to have a vaccine. Don’t tell me to do any of these things, but let me tell you what you will do with your body. And that’s not okay.”

Gutierrez said, “So it is about control, and I am concerned that it’s not just about abortion. Once abortion is banned, then it will be birth control. They’re already coming for sex education.

So it’s not just abortion — that is the tipping point. It goes so far beyond that. It goes to gender-affirming care. It will hurt all of this. And this is when we need to stand up and speak out and protect our right to abortion because it is our right. It’s no one else’s right to tell me what to do with my body and when I was pregnant. A long time ago, in the early 2000s, I didn’t have to tell anyone or ask anyone. I did talk to my husband about it, but I didn’t have to, and if there were issues, I could have gone to my doctor and made decisions for myself.

Engel wrapped up the roundtable, saying, “Republican extremists have been emboldened by this. They’ve made it their mission to go as far as they can. The next step, if they had the political power, would be a national abortion ban. We’ve seen it with my opponent [Juan Ciscomani.]”

They’ve been passing bills to restrict abortion medication, to take every single little hook that they can get to take away these rights. It’s incredible to me that they are focusing on our service members and our veterans because they’re so dependent on the federal government that gives them the federal hook.

My opponent wants this vote to take away these rights from veterans and those using federal benefits to access healthcare. It is particularly underhanded and will really hurt the people that we have asked to stand up for us, like our veterans.