Uncertainty at clinic after Ariz. ruling that bans most abortions
PHOENIX — Leah found out she was five weeks pregnant on the same day the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law banning nearly all abortions in the state.
The law is not expected to take effect until June, but Leah, 29, worried the state’s abortion clinics might be overwhelmed by an influx of patients or shut down abruptly. And she could not afford to take time off from her job installing bathroom showers to travel to another state for the procedure.
So Saturday morning, she threaded past a handful of protesters waving signs that read “You Shall Not Murder” and checked in at the Acacia Women’s Center in Phoenix.
“I might have taken a couple more weeks” to consider her options, she said. “But I kind of felt like my hands were tied.”
The court’s ruling last week reinstated a Civil War-era law that outlaws abortion from the moment of conception, which could have far-reaching consequences for women and has the potential to reshape the 2024 election. Inside the lobby of Acacia, the ruling felt deeply personal to Leah and other women, a decision that made them reluctant players in a series of national battles over contraception, in vitro fertilization and women’s health.
The ruling set off outrage and political maneuvering. The state’s Democratic lawmakers scrambled, but failed, to repeal the law, and lawyers on both sides are preparing for more battles over its implementation.
As the patients at Acacia scrolled through their phones and texted friends while waiting for their names to be called this weekend, they said judges and politicians who supported banning abortion did not understand their lives or why they had decided to get abortions.
In the decision, the justices said that because the federal right to abortion in Roe v. Wade had been overturned, nothing prevented Arizona from enforcing the 1864 law. They also said their job was to interpret two potentially conflicting state laws, not to make a policy judgment about abortion.
Abortion-rights groups argued the 1864 ban — which prohibits all abortions, including in cases of rape or incest, but makes an exception for ones that would save the mother’s life — had essentially been superseded by a 2022 law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks. But Arizona never took the earlier law off the books, and the 15-week ban stressed it was not repealing the 1864 law or creating any state right to abortion.
Like many abortion clinics, Acacia has long been a battleground. Protesters with bullhorns yell at women to turn around and wave signs condemning its owner, Dr. Ronald Yunis, an obstetrician-gynecologist, as a “baby killer.”
“We know he doesn’t like us here,” said Chad McDonald, 43, a construction worker who was part of the protest at the clinic Saturday. “These babies are human beings, just like a 4-yearold is a human being.”
Yunis turns on the sprinklers and blares Nine Inch Nails outside the clinic to drown out the demonstrators’ shouts. Protesters said he had poured ammonia at their feet. In 2019, he was arrested on a charge of pointing a gun at protesters as he drove away from the clinic. Yunis pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct and was dropped by Medicare, but he said he had been defending himself against increasingly aggressive protesters.
“The guy was coming at my car,” he said. “How many abortion providers have been murdered in the last 20 years? There’s a legitimate fear that someone running at your car after blocking your driveway might be meaning you harm.”