Arizona’s governor signed an extreme abortion restriction bill on Monday, which women’s health advocates say effectively writes medical malpractice into law.
The new law, which passed the state’s Republican-controlled legislature last week, requires that doctors tell women that drug-induced abortions can be reversed. Experts said the provision—the first of its kind to pass in the U.S.—was medically unfounded.
“This law will force abortion providers to give patients information about medical abortion care that is unsubstantiated and not supported by evidence—even abortion opponents admit there is no medical proof to support this information,” said Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation. “This is unacceptable and not how safe medical care of any kind is provided.”
The LA Times reported that State Sen. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who voted against the legislation, said the provision “requires medical professionals to commit medical malpractice.”
“This is junk science. It is quack medicine,” she said Wednesday. “There is absolutely no evidence anywhere in any peer-reviewed journal that supports this as a valid medical procedure.”
According to MSNBC‘s Irin Carmon, who said the bill was part of “the next wave of abortion restrictions”:
Reproductive rights advocates charge that the law is part of coordinated attack on abortion rights across the country. Indeed, Arizona’s “abortion reversal” language is cribbed from Americans United for Life’s 2015 model legislation guide (pdf).
“It’s just a piece of the larger strategy—using any means possible to dissuade a woman from a decision that she’s already made,” Hayley Smith, associate advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU, told ThinkProgress last week.
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