By Gloria Rebecca Gomez | AZ Mirror
An anti-abortion organization is pushing forward with a lawsuit aimed at keeping an abortion rights initiative off Arizona’s ballot this year, despite a trial court dismissing the challenge earlier this week as groundless.
Arizona Right to Life sought to convince Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian to throw out all the signature petitions filed by the Arizona Abortion Access Act, automatically disqualifying the initiative from ever going before voters. Unless a court finds otherwise, the initiative, which turned in more than double the required number of voter signatures, is widely expected to go before voters in November.
The anti-abortion group argued that the campaign behind the initiative misled Arizonans who signed petition sheets with an incomplete and confusing 200-word summary that left out how the proposal will affect current state laws. But Julian sided with backers of the abortion rights proposal, writing that past rulings have concluded petition summaries need only explain an initiative’s “principal provisions,” and not how it fits into the existing legal environment.
“Concern about the impact this initiative may have on existing abortion regulations is not a ground to compel the initiative’s removal from the ballot. ‘The proper place to argue about the potential impact of an initiative is in the political arena, in speeches, newspaper articles, advertisements and other forums,’” she wrote, referencing a 1987 ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court allowing a measure to proceed to the ballot.
