Arizona Planned Parenthood Expands in Tucson After Closings

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Sep 1, 2011   |   11:25AM   |   Tucson, AZ

After a new pro-life law going into effect caused Planned Parenthood to close or scale back at several locations throughout Arizona, the abortion business is announcing it is expanding its hours in Tucson to make up for it.

Thanks to a comprehensive pro-life law a court recently upheld, the Planned Parenthood abortion business stopped doing abortions at seven locations — including communities outside of Phoenix and Tucson. Planned Parenthood President Bryan Howard told the Arizona Republic newspaper the abortion business would be appealing the court’s decision but it has no choice to stop doing abortions until and unless another court rules because the laws are in effect now.

Planned Parenthood has 13 locations across the state, Howard indicated, and all of them either do abortions surgically or with the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug that has killed dozens of women and injured 2,200 women in the United States alone as of April 2011 figures from the FDA. Locations that do not do abortions refer for them.

Now, Planned Parenthood Arizona Hoffman Health Center, which Planned Parenthood operates with federal taxpayer funds near Tucson Mall at 529 W. Wetmore Road has expanded its hours at night and on the weekend. It will now be open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Mondays until 6 p.m. and Tuesdays until 7 p.m., according to the Arizona Daily Star.

Because Planned Parenthood is closing its center at the City of Tucson Archer Community Center, located on La Cholla Blvd, a representative of the abortion business told the newspaper it is able to expand the hours at the Hoffman facility. The Archer location had its last day open earlier this week and the abortion business sent letters to customers telling them to go to the new location.

As LifeNews.com reported earlier this month, the Arizona Court of Appeals issued a decision upholding a pro-life law that protects the health and safety of women and their unborn children by giving them information they don’t normally receive.

The Arizona Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in June in Planned Parenthood Arizona v. Horne, a case the abortion business filed which challenges key aspects of the 2009 Abortion Consent Act. The law is a pro-life measure Governor Jan Brewer signed which tells women of the risks associated with and alternatives to abortion. Planned Parenthood sued the state soon after its signing and a Superior Court judge blocked the law from taking effect while the case moves forward.

The law will now go into effect and it makes it so Arizona will require a notarized parental signature before an abortion can be performed on a minor child, women will be provided with full and accurate information by a doctor in person at least 24 hours before an abortion, medical professionals cannot be forced to perform abortions if it contradicts their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs and non-doctors will not be permitted by law to perform surgical abortions.

The Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the Abortion Consent Act on appeal after it was enjoined by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Daughton following a Planned Parenthood lawsuit. The

3-0 opinion vacates the injunction in its entirety.

The Center for Arizona Policy, a statewide pro-life group, drafted the Abortion Consent Act and is a part of the legal team – which includes Alliance Defense Fund, Bioethics Defense Fund, the Bioethics Defense Fund, and Life Legal Defense Fund – defending the constitutionality of the law. The law has several other pro-life provisions the pro-life organizations support.

“The Court acknowledged the Legislature’s right to pass legislation to protect the health and safety of women considering abortion,” said Deborah Sheasby, Center for Arizona Policy’s Legal Counsel. “This is a major victory for Arizona women.”

“If Planned Parenthood truly cared about what’s best for women, they wouldn’t be repeatedly going to court around the nation to stop laws that allow women to make fully informed choices,” said ADF Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden, who argued before the Court of Appeals on June 14. “The court ruled rightly in this case in rejecting the arguments of the nation’s largest purveyor of abortion.  The protection of women is not unconstitutional.”

“We hold that the statutes at issue would withstand federal constitutional scrutiny,” the Court of Appeals wrote in its 3-0 opinion, “and that the Arizona Constitution–to the extent it protects abortion rights at all–offers no greater protection than the federal constitution with respect to the regulations at issue in this case…. We hold that the statutes affected by the preliminary injunction are constitutional, and we therefore vacate the injunction in its entirety.”

“Everyone deserves full and accurate information before undergoing any medical procedure,” said Center for Arizona Policy Legal Counsel Deborah Sheasby, co-counsel and one of more than 2,000 attorneys in the ADF alliance. “These types of protections have been repeatedly upheld and are overwhelmingly supported by the public.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld 24-hour waiting periods, and multiple polls have found overwhelming public support for protections like those included in Arizona’s act.