Arizona’s pro-abortion measure will appear on November ballot

Pro-life activist Matthew Engelthaler places signs in front of Camelback Family Planning, an abortion clinic in Phoenix, on April 18, 2024. / Credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

CNA Staff, Aug 13, 2024 / 12:12 pm (CNA).

A measure to enshrine abortion into the Arizona Constitution will appear on the November ballot.

“The Arizona Abortion Access Act is on the ballot as Proposition 139!” Arizona for Abortion Access announced on its Facebook page on Monday. “This is Arizona’s chance to restore and protect the right to access abortion care, once and for all.”

The pro-abortion activists were required to collect about 380,000 signatures to place the measure on the ballot; they reportedly collected more than 575,000 signatures.

The proposal, if passed, would create “a fundamental right to abortion under Arizona’s constitution.” The government would “not be able to interfere with this fundamental right” prior to “fetal viability” absent a “compelling reason.”

Either before or after viability, meanwhile, the state “will not be able to interfere with the good-faith judgment of a treating health care professional that an abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant [woman].”

Arizona currently bans abortion after 15 weeks. 

Nearly a dozen states are considering pro-abortion measures ahead of the November elections. 

Abortion advocates have made gains in recent weeks to place pro-abortion measures on their respective state ballots. 

In June, activists in Nevada succeeded in placing a proposal on the 2024 ballot that would expand abortion by establishing it as a “fundamental right” to be exercised up until fetal viability “without interference from the state.” That amendment will have to be approved by a simple majority of voters in two consecutive elections.

In New York in June, meanwhile, an appellate court ruled in favor of putting a proposed abortion amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot after a lower court had ordered it removed. 

And in Arkansas in July, a pro-abortion group announced that it obtained the necessary signatures to put an abortion proposal on the state ballot. The proposal was rejected by the Arkansas secretary of state; the pro-abortion group is contesting the decision.