A legal battle over an Arizona fetal personhood law is ending in dismissal. The parties involved agreed that the case was moot under Arizona’s new abortion rights amendment.
Arizona Republican lawmakers in 2021 passed SB 1457, a bill that banned abortions for reasons of genetic abnormality. It also required fetuses to be granted all of the rights of other Arizona residents.
A group of Arizona doctors, along with the National Council of Jewish Women Arizona and other organizations sued over the law and courts blocked its enforcement as the case was pending.
In the meantime, Arizona voters passed Proposition 139, which enshrined broad abortion rights in the state constitution.
This week, plaintiffs and defendants in the lawsuit all signed a stipulation saying that the case should be dismissed because the legal landscape around abortion in Arizona has shifted and the rights to abortion granted in the new constitutional amendment are potentially relevant to the plaintiffs' claims.
U.S. District Court judge Douglas Rayes agreed, ordering the case to be dismissed without prejudice and dissolving a preliminary injunction that had blocked part of the law.
Reproductive rights groups are calling the dismissal a win.
“The people of Arizona have spoken loudly and clearly last November: decisions about pregnancy must remain with individuals, not politicians,” Civia Tamarkin, president of National Council of Jewish Women Arizona, said in a statement.
