9 March 20th-March 26th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | 2022 and it’s the case now that the state’s 15-week ban has been overturned. Even after Prop. 139, abortion in Arizona isn’t “as rosy of a picture as I think a lot of people want it to be,” said Dr. Misha Pangasa, an abortion provider and OB-GYN at Planned Parenthood Arizona. There are still “arbitrary obstacles that our patients have to jump through in order to get the abortion care that they need and have decided on.” The Guttmacher Institute still identifies Arizona as a restrictive state on abortion due to the sheer number of restrictions still on the books. Many of those were passed “under the guise of patient safety,” said Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick, the medical director and founder of Camelback Family Planning. “But they do not improve patient safety. They’re burdensome and unnecessary.” Goodrick, who founded her clinic in 1999, considers the 24-hour waiting period restriction “one of the worst.” Some patients may need the extra time to think through their decision, Pangasa said, but many abor- tion patients already have their minds made up. Many are already mothers with busy schedules. Both appointments — the first to request an abortion, the second to actually have it — must be conducted in person because the state bans telemedicine for abortion. Many patients have a hard time getting one day off of work, much less two. Often, patients can’t get that second appointment until one to two weeks later. Depending on where you live in the Grand Canyon State, obtaining abortion care could mean hundreds of miles on the road and multiple motel stays. There are nine abortion clinics in the state, according to Abortion Finder and Planned Parenthood: six in the Valley, two in Tucson and one in Flagstaff. If someone in Page wanted an abortion, the closest clinic would be Planned Parenthood’s Flagstaff location, which is two hours away. Round trips for both state-mandated appointments would require eight hours in the car. The Flagstaff clinic is equipped only to provide medication abortions — if the patient is past 12 weeks, a trip to the organization’s Glendale clinic would be required. Eight hours in the car has now become 16. “This tactic to delay care just pushes people to have to wait longer (and) drive further,” Pangasa said. Legislators have also increasingly restricted who can provide abortion care. Only physicians — not nurse practitioners or other medical staff — can provide surgical or medication abortions or read the state- created script that pushes abortion alterna- tives. At Taylor’s clinic, she has to sit down with every patient to read the script and hand over a pill. If a nurse practitioner or another staffer could do this instead, Taylor could see many more patients who need her attention. OB-GYNs like Taylor have other obsta- cles to surmount. Abortion providers must have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinic, but obtaining admitting privileges can be tough. Providers must prove to hospitals that a certain number of their patients will be admitted for care at the hospital. With few abortion-related compli- cations these days, it can be difficult to reach that number. “It’s like a Catch-22,” Goodrick said. When she moved to Arizona, Taylor obtained admitting privileges by showing her caseload from California, when she had a full OB-GYN practice. She’s been able to renew each year by establishing an under- standing with the local hospitals. She does not deliver babies as part of her clinic work, and in her 16 years of providing care in Arizona, she’s had perhaps five patients require hospitalization, she said. “What happens down here in Phoenix is we have progressive faculty in hospitals that understand the assignment,” Taylor said. “They understand the political climate, and I have an agreement.” Other restrictions, such as a requirement for parental consent, are so burdensome that Goodrick’s clinic has a pro-bono lawyer on call to help minors, many of whom are in the foster system. That attorney helps teens obtain a judicial bypass, which can be a scary and confusing process. One of Goodrick’s staffers is a notary public who can notarize parental permission slips, sparing teen patients a cumbersome errand. All of these restrictions make providers’ and patients’ lives more difficult. They also “create this idea that somehow abortion providers aren’t safe,” Taylor said, which “puts up that barrier for patients to make them think that they’re doing something that’s dangerous.” And if getting an abortion in Arizona is hard, knocking abortion restrictions off the books is even harder. Long road ahead Theoretically, the process of invalidating Arizona’s abortion laws should be simple. The voters clearly supported fewer restric- tions. The right to an abortion is written in black and white in the state constitution. Clearly, state lawmakers would vote to align Arizona laws with voters’ intent. Nope. In the first legislative session since Prop. 139 passed, state Democrats have introduced 10 bills to repeal Dr. DeShawn Taylor has run Desert Star Institute for Family Planning in Phoenix since 2013. (Morgan Fischer) No Silver Bullet from p 6 >> p 10
