


The legal issue is whether the ban effectively prohibits abortions before viability, which would be barred by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, or is merely a restriction such as others the high court has ruled that states can impose.

But it's not just the Arizona ban's legality that's in dispute as lawyers, doctors and advocacy groups weigh in on both sides of the issue.


Arizona is now among 10 states to enact versions of 20-week bans. However, Arizona's ban is considered to be the earliest because its starting point to calculate a fetus' "probable gestational age" would be about two weeks earlier than under the others states' versions.




Arizona's Republican-led Legislature approved it as part of a broader abortion law last spring. The ban was to have taken effect Aug. 2 but the 9th Circuit temporarily blocked implementation pending a ruling on an appeal of a judge's ruling that upheld the law's constitutionality.




Because the ban has an exception for women with medical emergencies, it's not an outright prohibition, Maricopa County Attorney Montgomery told the 9th Circuit in a brief. "The act does not prevent abortions."

Supporters of legal abortion say the other side's justifications ignore women's health risks associated with pregnancy and other medical conditions and that claims of pre-viability fetuses experiencing pain are unproven.

Saying the ban is merely a regulation is a "fabrication," said Janet Crepps, a Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer helping represent three Arizona OB-GYNS whose lawsuit challenged the ban. "For some women, it's an outright ban prior to viability."

While most of the other 20-week bans start the age calculation from a supposed date of conception, Arizona's version begins with the first day of the woman's last menstrual period. For most women, that would be about two weeks earlier than conception.


Arizona's abortion law already used the last menstrual period as a dating technique before the ban was enacted, and its use isn't controversial by itself because it's a standard starting point in obstetrics for calculating a due date. 

"LMP is the gold standard," said Crepps, the Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer.


Legislative supporters of the ban relied on testimony by Dr. Allan Sawyer, a Phoenix-area OB-GYN opposed to abortion, that it'd be very rare that fetal anomalies that might prompt women to get abortions couldn't be detected earlier than 20 weeks of pregnancy.


That means women would have "time to make a decision on whether or not to abort," said Rep. Kimberly Yee, the sponsor of the abortion bill that included the ban.

However, an Arizona OB-GYN opposed to the ban said many women don't have early ultrasounds because of limitations of insurance coverage and that some don't learn of anomalies such as the lack of a brain stem until right at about 18 or 19 weeks. Then it takes time to get a confirming diagnosis from a specialist, said Dr. Maria Manriguez.

"By the time they get an appointment, it could easily be 20 weeks and that person is not able to terminate that pregnancy that could not be viable," said Manriguez.
