Since the Dobbs decision, the right to an abortion has been placed back into the hands of states.
In the 2024 election, 11 states including Arizona had propositions related to abortion on their ballots. In Arizona, Proposition 139, also known as the Arizona Abortion Access Act, passed with 62% of the vote. This decision has divided voters and showed the changing values of the Republican party and the Catholic voting base.
Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, said the state government will not be able to pass any laws that are viewed as “denying, restricting or interfering with a woman’s fundamental right to an abortion.”
While this does give women in Arizona the fundamental right to an abortion, Herrod says there may be unintended consequences. What she calls “common sense laws” that are meant to safeguard the well-being of individuals getting an abortion could be overturned by this amendment.
Some of these common sense laws include minors needing permission from their parents, a mandatory 24-hour wait period from when women ask for the care and getting it and requiring doctors to be the ones who give out abortions.
“While this ballot measure claims to be moderate in nature, its vague language would make Arizona one of the most extreme states in terms of abortion,” Bishops with the Arizona Catholic Conference said in a letter.
Danise Rees, president of Students for Life at the ASU Catholic Newman Center, stated the amendment would place viability after birth, compared to previously when abortions were permitted up to 15 weeks. The amendment also replaced the need for a qualified medical doctor, and instead allows training health care professionals to conduct the procedure.
“Some things that include healthcare professionals are veterinarians or physical therapists or dentists, like all these things that aren’t people who are qualified to give abortions or even refer people to abortion pills,” said Rees.
With the passing of more conservative leaning propositions such as Proposition 312 and 314, the passing of the Arizona Abortion Access Act stands in stark contrast.
“It was easy to say you were pro-life when there was nothing you could do about it.” Rees said.
Mark Habelt, former vice-president of Students for Life, spoke on the shift of the Republican party away from the issue of abortion.
“Just goes to show the conservative movement is not your father’s conservative movement like it was 40 years ago,” Habelt said. “It’s definitely shifted in a pro-choice direction.”
According to the Pew Research Center, 67% of adults in Arizona identify as being Christian. The biggest groups in that demographic are evangelical protestants and Catholics. Though the church is against abortion, over half of Catholics believe abortion should be legal in most if not all cases.
Catholics for Choice, a pro-choice Catholic advocacy group, argue that the government should not have a role in the conversations between a medical provider and their patients.
“The question isn’t whether it’s going to be the woman and her doctor or the government. It’s more so is it going to be the government or the institutions?” Rees said.
A former director of one of those “institutions,” Mayra Rodriguez, who oversaw an Arizona Planned Parenthood and now prominent anti-abortion advocate, blew the whistle on the malpractice she was seeing in the clinics. Although she was raised Catholic, when she immigrated to the U.S., she worked at one of the non-abortion clinics dealing mainly with STI-testing and contraceptives.
In 2017, she was moved to oversee one of the abortion clinics. The first thing she noticed was doctors were ignoring a piece of legislation requiring all witnesses of a surgical abortion to testify by signing an affidavit that every part of the fetus was out of the womb. Rodriguez said, Doctors ignored this key piece of legislation and would sign all the charts first thing in the morning.
Another abuse she witnessed was doctors failing to self-report complications encountered during surgical abortions. In one case of a woman who was bleeding caused by perforations during the procedure, Rodriquez recalls being told by the doctor that they would report it, but when she did check the chart it said, “abortion done without complications” with no mention that the woman was bleeding or had to be taken to the emergency room. When she brought these and other concerns up to her supervisors, she was “constantly dismissed.”
For Amanda Ariola, her Catholic faith and pro-choice views do not contradict. She works as a physician assistant for a hospital in Massachusetts but lived and studied medicine in Arizona and trusts patients to make the right decisions for themselves.
“That includes mothers,” Ariola said of modeling Jesus’ care for the oppressed. “I follow him in that way for my job, I guess, care for people, the sick, the marginalized, the poor.”
Rodriguez argues that employees at Planned Parenthood follow pro-choice values not due to their beliefs, but due to convenience.
“They know it’s a baby, and they just don’t care. It’s easy money to them,” said Rodriguez, who later added that Planned Parenthood trains their employees not to say the word “baby.”
Ariola criticizes other Catholics for being ignorant of the position of mothers seeking this care.
“We have been taught to love our neighbors, love the people around us, have empathy and don’t give such harsh judgment to others,” she said.
Trent Horn, staff apologist at Catholic Answers, host of the podcast “Council of Trent,” and anti-abortion advocate commented on the inconsistency between pro-choice Catholics and the teachings of Catholicism, which often preach against abortion.
“I think the disconnect is they don’t they don’t treat abortion as the killing of a human being but treat it more like euthanizing a golden retriever: sad but justifiable,” said Horn
Rev. Nathaniel Glenn, Catholic priest at St. Mary’s Basilica, points to the decline of religion at large as the cause of why Catholics have shifted more pro-choice.
“I think if you look at the statistics with open eyes, there is a very deep seated and broad movement away from organized religion happening right now in America,” said Glenn.
According to the Pew Research Center, the largest growing religious group are the religious “nones” which makes up 28% of U.S. adults who identify as being either atheist or agnostic.
Of all U.S. adults, 61% believe abortion should be legal in most if not all cases. The Catholic population deviates by only about 5 percentage points. Overall, Catholics align with where society has been moving for the past several decades.
“We have to demonstrate and argue for the fact that the sexual revolution is not something that leads to human flourishing and human happiness,” Glenn said. “And I think we were never going to change the access or the desire for abortion until we change people’s thoughts and desires about sexuality in general.”
After many years, Rodriguez came back to her Catholic faith, and cites her time overseeing the abortion clinic as what woke her up.
“I remember the day that I finally started praying for him, I knew that I had been healed,” she said.
Edited by Shi Bradley
