Why Arizona Democrats are fired up over an abortion ballot initiative

Abortion rights advocates scored a major win on Monday when Arizona’s secretary of state announced that organizers had gathered enough signatures to force a vote in November on whether the state constitution should enshrine the right to an abortion.

The Abortion Access for All Act will now appear on the ballot as Proposition 139 and ask voters if Arizona should establish a fundamental right to abortion in its constitution. The proposed amendment comes after Arizona’s Supreme Court earlier this year upheld a ban from 1864, before Arizona was even a state, that criminalized nearly all abortions. But the state’s Legislature ultimately voted in favor of a bill to repeal the harsh ban, and Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, signed it.

At the same time, a law from 2022 that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks — even in cases of rape or incest — that was signed by the previous Republican governor, Doug Ducey, remains on the books. Advocates say that law does not adequately protect the most vulnerable populations.

“It’s young people. It’s older people who have variable cycles because of their age,” Mackenzie Joy Brennan, a pro bono abortion attorney who sits on the board of the Desert Star Institute for Family Planning, the state’s only non-profit independent non-profit abortion provider, told The Independent last week. Brennan frequently represents teenagers seeking abortions.

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Democrats have hoped the abortion ballot initiative would help them win support on the presidential and Senate level and boost voter turnout in November. Indeed, many of the ads for Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego have highlighted Republican Kari Lake’s previous praise of the 1864 abortion ban.

Of course, ever since President Joe Biden, who was notoriously squeamish when talking about abortion, announced he would step aside, Vice President Harris has shown signs of being competitive in the state, holding a rally with more than 15,000 people last week where she emphasized her support for abortion rights. Similarly, Democrats hope to flip the state legislature and think the amendment could give them the lift.

“I think we’re in a very strong position to flip — we’ve obviously got the abortion ballot initiative out there that I think is going to help drive contrast on a very important issue between Democrats and Republicans,” Oscar De Los Santos, the assistant Democratic leader in the Arizona state house, told The Independent.

At the same time, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes noted the bipartisan nature of the 577,971 sigantures the initiative garnered. As of July, Arizona had 4.1 million registered voters.

“We’ve never seen anything close to that ever for any issue, and when you think back to not just John McCain Republicans, but Barry Goldwater Republicans,” he told The Independent in an interview last week in reference to two Arizona senators who went on to become the Republican nominees for president in 2008 and 1964, respectively. Indeed, Goldwater’s wife played a role in founding what would become Planned Parenthood’s branch in Arizona.

Arizona’s libertarian streak has often defined it, hence why for years it resisted Democratic control and has maintained ardently pro-gun (though that dynamic has changed and the state has not elected a Republican senator since 2016).

Dawn Penich, a communications director for Arizona for Abortion Access, told The Independent that the petition received thousands of signatures from Mohave County, where 75 percent of voters supported Donald Trump in 2020.

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“They would say, you know, this may not be the choice that I make or that my daughter makes, but it’s not the government’s damn business,” she said.

At the same time, Brennan said that while she wholeheartedly supports the initiative, she added that even if it passes, there will still be legal hurdles. Abortions would be allowed only up until fetal viability, generally around 24 weeks, which she said puts providers in a “weird” place.

“As you might expect, that’s not a hard set line, and it’s really not for politicians determining because it’s very personal, it’s very variable,” she said.

Penich pointed out that providers would at least have constitutional backing for the first time, which could give them sturdier legal ground in case of challenges.

“But for the first time ever, Prop 139 will give us a constitutional anchor that says that the legislature cannot hinder you know, the premise of this, what will then be a constitutional amendment,” Penich told The Independent.

It should be noted that the legal limbo that Arizona faces largely exists because of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson, which killed Roe v Wade. It’s turned the state, and all states, for that matter, into a legal Wild West for abortion access. And it means that whether the amendment passes, it has created a patchwork abortion legal system that will remain difficult to navigate for years to come.