Arizona state law provides protection for the preborn from conception.
Center for Arizona Policy, Reason for Life, and Americans United for Life’s Steven H. Aden, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel, urged the Arizona Supreme Court to preserve the state’s most protective pro-life statute in an amicus brief filed Wednesday.
For the state’s entire history, Arizona law has prohibited physicians from electively ending the lives of preborn children of all ages. Roe v. Wade prevented enforcement of that law, but the legislature declined to repeal it and instead recently reaffirmed its desire to maintain that protection for preborn children. Yet even after Roe was overturned, the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected that protection and said that physicians can perform elective abortions during the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy, likely ending the lives of around 13,000 children each year in Arizona.
The amicus brief encourages the Arizona Supreme Court to overturn that lower-court decision and allow Arizona law to provide pro-life legal protection for children from conception.
Carolyn McDonnell, Litigation Counsel, said, “Despite the plain language and intent of Arizona law, the lower court blocked the state’s pre-Roe law through an abortion distortion analysis. The Arizona Supreme Court should correct this egregious error and allow the legislature to safeguard women and preborn children from the harms of abortion violence.”
Bradley Kehr, Government Affairs Director, said, “Americans United for Life has again called upon the Arizona Supreme Court to vindicate the intent of the people of Arizona and their elected representatives, which was set aside by the lower court.”
Samuel D. Green, President and General Counsel at Reason for Life, said, “Planned Parenthood profits by ending the lives of children in the womb and wants the Arizona Supreme Court to erase the pro-life law that the people’s legislature chose to preserve. The Court should instead respect the legislature’s decision to save—rather than destroy—lives.”
The full amicus brief can be found here.
