– On Monday, April 8, the Center for Reproductive Rights will argue that Arizona’s abortion regulatory scheme is unconstitutional. Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers, (TRAP) laws, are intended to make abortion prohibitively expensive and increasingly difficult to obtain.
"The regulation does not promote women’s health; instead it discriminates against women and abortion providers, and would permit the government access to patients’ personal medical files without their consent," said Bonnie Scott Jones, staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Abortion providers already comply with federal and state laws governing health care providers but Arizona’s TRAP law would subject them to unique levels of government oversight and intrusion. The law affects all doctors’ offices and clinics where five or more first-trimester abortions are performed per month, or any second or third-trimester abortions. Under the regulatory scheme, administered by the Arizona Department of Health Services, 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.
These challenged rules apply to no other doctors performing outpatient procedures. 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.
Arizona’s law was passed in 1999 and has been blocked by a preliminary injunction since March 2000.
Bonnie Scott Jones and Brigitte Amiri of the Center for Reproductive Rights represent Tucson Woman’s Clinic; Old Pueblo Family Planning; Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona; Abortion Services of Phoenix; Robert H. Tamis, MD, PC; and three private physicians.
