House Speaker Ben Toma, R-Peoria, speaks with attendees at the 2023 Update from Capitol Hill hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix on April 6, 2023. (Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
Arizona’s top two Republican lawmakers say doctors have no legal right to challenge a 2021 ban the GOP-controlled Legislature enacted on abortions due to fetal abnormalities because they aren’t saying they intend to violate it.
And even if they did, the attorneys for House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen are telling federal appellate judges there’s no imminent threat they would actually be prosecuted.
That’s because Gov. Katie Hobbs issued an executive order removing the power from county attorneys to prosecute any abortion-related cases, giving it solely to Attorney General Kris Mayes. And Mayes has said she doesn’t intend to bring charges against any doctor who violates any abortion laws.
What all that means, the lawyers for the GOP lawmakers say, is the challengers have no legal standing to even be in court, and their claim should be thrown out of court.
The arguments come as doctors are going later this month to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to overturn the ruling of a trial judge earlier year which upheld a 2021 state law that makes it a crime for a doctor to terminate a pregnancy if he or she knows the sole reason it is being sought is a genetic defect of the fetus.
Judge Douglas Rayes, however, pointed out that last year’s year’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the historic 1973 ruling which said there is a constitutional right of abortion. And that, he concluded, freed state lawmakers to enact — and enforce — whatever restrictions they want.
