Arizona voters approved adding constitutional protections for abortion rights in 2024. But that hasn’t stopped state lawmakers from taking up the issue in various forms since that time.
And this week, they’ll be debating and voting on a handful of issues related to abortion.
One bill would make it a Class 2 felony for someone to give a pregnant woman an abortion-inducing medication without her knowledge or consent. Another would allow a court to order child support retroactively to the date of a positive pregnancy test.
Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to talk about what to expect this week at the state Capitol.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Howie, good morning.
HOWARD FISCHER: Good morning.
BRODIE: So as I mentioned, a number of sort of abortion-adjacent related bills. I'm wondering though, Howie, you've looked at all of these. Like is there a theme or any sort of common threads between all of these?
FISCHER: Well, as you point out, voters approved Prop. 139 in 2024 by like a 3-2 margin. And it place in the Arizona Constitution a fundamental right for a woman to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability, which is from 22 to 24 weeks. Lawmakers have kind of tried to nibble around the edges of that to see, well, what can we do?
And when I say lawmakers, I'm talking about those who oppose abortion. Now some of these are dealing with the question of who is a human being. And that's really the common thread that you're finding in there. For example, if in fact you, you go ahead and make the murder of an unborn child felony murder, the same as if you were murdering a "live person," you have created a personhood status for that fetus, at least in terms of that statute.
I think a lot of the fears of people is that once you start doing that, you give the fetus other forms of status. You have another support one that you mentioned about the child support retroactive date of a positive pregnancy. Here too, this language defining "preborn person as a human offspring from conception to birth."
Then there are things that are designed apparently to deter people from getting an abortion. It would require the state Board of Education to come up with a mandatory program where students would go ahead and would have to go ahead and say: Here's what you need to learn about abortion. Here's what you need to learn about the various stages of a human development. When do they develop a spinal cord? When did they develop arms and legs? Presumably with pictures.
Now, is that anti-abortion? You know, on one hand it's just simply biology. On the other hand, I think the foes say what you're trying to do is tell them: This is a human being and therefore you should not be able to abort it.
BRODIE: Well, Howie, I wonder if that sort of fetal personhood argument is one that might — assuming that any number of these bills get to Gov. Katie Hobbs — that might bring out her veto pen.
FISCHER: Oh, I think the veto stamp is poised and ready. I mean, you know, she has got — her ratio this year, actually, she's vetoed more bills this year than she signed. But she's also made it clear that one of her touchstones, while she's willing to negotiate on things like the budget, like the spending, is to protect what she believes on our individual rights and protect what's in Prop. 139.
She made a very public display of signing Prop. 139's petition to get it on the ballot. And anything that she sees that will get between a woman and her doctor or a woman and her family is totally unacceptable to her.
BRODIE: Sure. Howie, let me ask you about another bill that's gonna come up for debate in the Senate later today. And this has to do with cities and collecting sort of wayward shopping carts from, like, grocery stores and places like that.
FISCHER: Well, this is an interesting one, because we've all seen as we've wandered around neighborhoods, just shopping carts have been abandoned somewhere. They're also being used to a certain extent by homeless people. And cities are saying: You're creating litter out here. Now, from the perspective of grocery stores, they're saying, "Wait, we are the victims here. We let customers use shopping carts. We've tried to put in things so the wheels lock up, you know, when you cross a certain point. But we can't do everything, and so why should we be penalized?"
That's what Phoenix ... is doing with their ordinance. They're saying, if in fact we find your shopping carts out there and you don't have a program to try to retrieve them yourselves, we will charge you a fee every time we have to get it returned to you.
Again, the businesses are saying, "Wait, we're the victims. It was stolen from us." Is it so different? As opposed to anything else that is stolen by people? Now, the argument of lawmakers is these are specifically what they call mobile devices. And because they're mobile and because of the fact that they can be stolen so easily and can be abandoned so easily — and there's a history abandoning them — that we should force grocery stores to do more.
You get in some interesting issues there between the rights of cities to protect their neighborhoods and the rights of businesses who say we shouldn't have to pay because somebody else steals our grocery carts and leaves it over on the corner of Mill and University in Tempe.
BRODIE: Right. Well, and so the bill up for debate would basically tell cities, you can no longer charge those fees, right. So in theory, if a city has to go out collecting shopping carts, they cannot charge Safeway, Fry's, Trader Joe's, whomever, for the practice of ... of collecting them and bringing them back.
FISCHER: Yeah. And that's what HB 2460 would do, it it would be a preemption. And as you know, lawmakers love to preempt what cities do. Cities say: "We're in the best position to protect our neighborhoods." And it comes down, again, to do we allow the state to say, "No, you shouldn't be able to do this." But then you leave the cities with the problem, and they say: "We can't afford to go out and have a guy with a pickup truck go out and pick up things and return them to their rightful owners."
... Is that the job of the city? It depends on who you talk to.
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