- The Center for Reproductive Rights today filed a federal challenge to Arizona's new licensing and regulatory scheme targeted specifically at health care providers that perform abortions. Appearing on behalf of five reproductive health clinics and four private physicians, the Center for Reproductive Rights is seeking to block implementation of these unnecessary, burdensome and discriminatory rules.
Under the new law, beginning April 1 all doctor's offices and clinics where five or more first-trimester abortions are performed per month, or any second or third trimester abortions, will be required to comply with new regulations administered by the Arizona Department of Health Services. However, these challenged rules apply to no other doctors performing outpatient procedures.
"The new rules will not protect women's health or serve any other valid state purpose," said Bonnie Scott Jones, staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy organization representing the plaintiffs.
"They will, however, interfere with the private relationship between a woman and her doctor, violate the privacy of abortion patients, unnecessarily increase the costs of providing abortions, deprive doctors of using their professional medical judgment, and cause some doctors to stop providing abortions altogether. In short, the requirements will actually harm the health of women seeking abortions in Arizona, as well as violate the rights of those women and their doctors."
Jones also pointed out that for years the state legislature explicitly denied the Department of Health Services the authority to license, supervise, regulate or control any private office or clinic of a licensed health provider unless the patients are kept overnight or treated with general anesthesia.
Under the regulatory scheme, the targeted abortion clinics and private physicians would be subject to unannounced and warrantless inspections of facilities and patient records and would risk civil and criminal penalties for failure to comply with any of the arbitrary rules. For private physicians who fit the criteria, the new rules impose mandatory standards on virtually all areas of the doctor's practice, including burdensome administrative, operating and personnel requirements that serve no medical purpose.
Bonnie Scott Jones and Suzanne Novak of the Center for Reproductive Rights are filing the complaint on behalf of the Tucson Woman's Clinic; Old Pueblo Family Planning; Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona; Abortion Services of Phoenix; Robert H. Tamis, MD, PC; and four private physicians. The Planned Parenthood plaintiff is also represented by Tucson attorney Grace McIlvain and by Eve Gartner of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The defendants include the head of the Arizona Department of Health Services, the Arizona Attorney General, the Pima County Attorney and Maricopa County Attorney.
