Phoenix, AZ (LifeNews.com) -- The Arizona state legislature has given final approval to a bill banning partial-birth abortions and now the measure heads to Governor Janet Napolitano. The governor is a long-time abortion advocate, but there is no word yet on whether she plans to sign or veto the ban on the three-day-long abortion procedure.

Cathi Herrod, president of The Center for Arizona Policy, told LifeNews.com she hopes the governor will sign the bill and she called on pro-life advocates to ask her to do so.

“Partial-birth abortion is a brutal and inhumane procedure that borders on infanticide," Herrod said. “Empowering state officials to put a stop to this procedure in our state encourages respect for human life.”

Arizona could be the next state to ban partial-birth abortions following a Supreme Court decision last April upholding a federal ban on them.

States are banning the abortions to allow local officials to assist federal authorities in enforcing the law and in case the federal law is ever repealed.

“The state law is needed because the federal law only applies in limited scenarios, because parallel state and federal bans give prosecutors more options, and because regulating abortion is primarily the job of the states,” Herrod explained.

Arizona initially approved a partial-birth abortion ban in 1997, but a federal judge declared it unconstitutional. The attorney general filed an appeal but Napolitano dropped the case when she took over as the state's top attorney.

Herrod told LifeNews.com the bill Napolitano received reasserts Arizona’s ban on partial-birth abortion the court overturned and the language of the state law mirrors the federal law.

In addition, Herrod said the Supreme Court, in its April 2007 decision upholding the national partial-birth abortion ban, gave states considerable latitude to ban the abortion method and implement other abortion limits.

“The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the high court ruling.

The Supreme Court further said that the state has authority to regulate partial-birth abortion because the procedure is inconsistent with the state’s interests in protecting the integrity of the medical profession and promoting live childbirth.

The high court previously invalidated a Nebraska partial-birth abortion ban in 2000 in the Carhart case, which caused other state bans to be unconstitutional.

During the legislature's consideration of the ban, Ron Johnson, of the Arizona Catholic Conference, told the Arizona Daily Star he thinks lower courts would follow the Supreme Court's lead if another case went back to trial.

"We have a road map now in terms of what the court will deem permissible in this area," he said. He said House Bill 2769 has been "carefully drafted in order to essentially mirror federal legislation that we know is permissible and is something that works."

President Bush signed the national partial-birth abortion ban into law in 2003 and abortion advocates took it to court in three separate lawsuits and federal courts in each case relied on the Supreme Court's decision in 2000 and declared the ban unconstitutional.

Much of the debate revolved around whether a partial-birth abortion is ever medically necessary.

Dr. Anthony Levatino, a Las Cruces, New Mexico OBGYN who formerly did abortions in New York, says a partial-birth abortion is a three day long process and would never be a medical procedure a doctor would need to use to protect a woman's health.

"The way you end a pregnancy to save a woman's life is to deliver the (baby)," Levatino said. "If you wait three days to do a partial birth abortion, she's going to end up in the morgue."

Levatino said the health exception abortion advocates want is a "legal tactic" that has no basis in medical fact.

ACTION: Contact Governor Napolitano and ask her to sign the partial-birth abortion ban into law. View this page for contact information.

Related web sites:
Center for Arizona Policy - http://www.azpolicy.org
Arizona Catholic Conference - http://www.diocesephoenix.org/acc
Arizona Right to Life - http://arizonarighttolife.org