Proposal would endanger not just pregnant people, but physicians, too

As the war against COVID-19 continues, now claiming half a million lives, physicians and other frontline workers continue to be lauded as “health care heroes.” However, in the Arizona Legislature lawmakers have a different agenda — to criminalize physicians.

This legislative session has seen a litany of anti-abortion bills but Senate Bill 1457 is especially harmful to Arizona’s women and physicians. The legislation is sweeping and at times vague, imposing a litany of restrictions on performing and receiving abortion care.

SB 1457 is one of the most egregious anti-abortion bills because it would make a physician performing an abortion that was sought because of a genetic abnormality a Class 3 felony. Nobody benefits from prosecuting medical professionals for providing legal medical care.

If patients are unable to receive an abortion from a trained professional, they will have to seek one from an unlicensed provider, risking their health. Studies show that increasing abortion restrictions does not reduce abortion rates, but rather increases the risk that a woman will have to undergo an unsafe abortion.

Public educational institutions and their employees would also be prohibited from performing or providing abortions, counseling on abortions and providing referrals for abortions. This gag rule jeopardizes the three OB-GYN residency programs in Arizona, as they require abortion training as part of their accreditation.

If SB 1457 goes into effect, OB-GYN trainees will be banned from providing comprehensive reproductive health care and will be unable to become board-certified obstetrician-gynecologists.

Arizona-educated medical students will then have to seek residency training out of state. As a consequence, federal funding for graduate medical education slots for OB-GYNs would be eliminated.

Arizona already has a physician shortage crisis, including a substantial shortage in maternity care — predominantly afflicting rural areas. Moreover, only around half of Arizona residency trained physicians will continue to practice in Arizona. We need to be implementing bills and policies that focus on retaining doctors, not driving them away.

In addition to endangering residency training, SB 1457 prohibits state or political subdivisions from contracting with abortion providers or their affiliates. Medical schools routinely enter into affiliation agreements to place medical students in clinical rotations as a requirement for degree completion.

Given the broad definition of “abortion provider,” the legislation would significantly restrict placement opportunities. Conscience clauses in Arizona already exist to allow students and other health professionals to opt-out of providing support to any medical procedure they object to, rendering SB 1457 irrelevant.

In addition to restricting clinical rotation opportunities, research opportunities are threatened. The bill bans use of public funding from being used on any research project that involves abortion or cloning. Necessary public health research, investigating abortion rates and laws, would be compromised and put in jeopardy existing research and federal grant money.

SB 1457 is a laundry list of anti-abortion and anti-abortion provider restrictions that only serve to harm Arizona’s robust health care system. Abortion is legal, essential health care which should remain between the patient and provider.

Endangering graduate medical education and imprisoning physicians is extremist and ineffectual. Legislators need to vote no on SB 1457, focusing their efforts on bills that will actually improve the livelihood of Arizonans.

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