Arizona Governor claims gathering data on abortion ‘an attack on women’

Arizona’s annual abortion report is ‘an attack on women’, the state’s Governor has claimed.

In her State of the State address, Governor Katie Hobbs said Arizona’s abortion reporting law was tantamount to “government surveillance of pregnant women” and urged lawmakers to ditch it.

According to the most recent statistics, 12,888 abortions were recorded in Arizona in 2023, up 12 per cent on the previous year.

Legal requirement

Since 2010, abortion providers must submit to the state’s Department of Health Service a report of “each abortion performed in the hospital or facility”.

Data collated from each submission includes the mother’s age, marital status, the number of prior abortions, the gestational age of the unborn child, and any medical complications that resulted from the abortion.

However, the record does not include the mother’s name, or any other information that could be used to identify the individual who had an abortion.

In November, the state voted to allow abortion for any reason up to the point of “fetal viability”, the age at which babies are deemed to be ‘viable’ outside the womb – usually between 22 to 25 weeks.

Cover-up

Gov Hobbs declared that she was “proud to have signed the repeal of the draconian 1864 total abortion ban” and welcomed the recent liberalisation of the state’s abortion laws.

She continued: “I have been steadfast in calling for the end of the abortion reporting law that requires government surveillance of pregnant women – and I again call on this Legislature to get rid of this unnecessary, invasive report for good.”

Planned Parenthood, which carried out 16 per cent of Arizona’s reported abortions in 2023, is also campaigning for an end to the annual report. It claimed: “This type of reporting is medically unnecessary”.

But Cathi Herrod, President of the pro-life Center for Arizona Policy, asked: “why does Governor Hobbs not want Arizona lawmakers and the public to know what’s going on with abortion and how to help women”.

Abortion industry

Abortion giant Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in the United States.

According to its most recent annual report, ‘Above and Beyond’, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates performed 392,715 abortions in 2022-23.

The organisation boasted that demand for abortion at its centres in States where it is not restricted “soared by up to 700%” in 2022-23 and that its lawyers were seeking to challenge pro-life protections in sixteen states.

Human Coalition President Jeff Bradford said: “The sick irony is that they are going ‘above and beyond’ not to care for women but to expand abortion.”