Bryan Howard

opinion contributor

Politicians shouldn’t be making reproductive health decisions for women, but that’s exactly what’s happening. Arizona lawmakers have made it difficult – or even impossible – for women to access safe, legal abortion by enacting medically unnecessary, politically motivated laws that target abortion providers.

As a direct result, there are large parts of the state where abortion services are unavailable. Eighty percent of Arizona counties have no health centers that provide abortion care, leaving many women outside of the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas without access to abortion.

One set of these medically unnecessary restrictions, the physician-only rules, prohibits trained medical professionals – such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants – from providing abortion care.

After passage of those rules, Planned Parenthood was immediately forced to stop providing abortion services in Yuma, Prescott Valley, Goodyear and Chandler – and those health centers were eventually closed.

Laws make it hard to provide abortions

In Maricopa County, Planned Parenthood only has two providers to offer services. In Pima County, as well as the southern and eastern areas of Arizona, we have only one abortion provider. In the entire northern half of the state, there is only one health center that provides abortion care.

The hostile political climate in our state makes it difficult to recruit, hire and retain doctors to cover the gaps created by the physician-only rules. Arizona prohibits state-funded medical schools from training doctors to provide abortions, which limits the pool of candidates. It is especially difficult to recruit doctors to work in rural areas.

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Telemedicine to administer medication abortion could help make abortion more accessible. But it is not permitted, even though telemedicine has been widely embraced in Arizona as a high-quality health-care option.

The state Legislature has not banned telemedicine delivery of any procedure other than abortion. In fact, the Legislature has promoted the use of telemedicine to provide other health-care services – even treatment for strokes. There is no medical reason to make an exception for abortion.

Another set of these laws and regulations requires a mandatory 24-hour waiting period for patients seeking abortion care. Patients must make two in-person appointments over two days regardless of how far that forces them to travel.

Poor, minorities are hit especially hard

The burden of these medically unnecessary regulations weighs even heavier on low-income women. The eight poorest counties in the state do not have providers, forcing low-income women to struggle with the travel costs associated with two visits to a health center.

Low-wage jobs often have difficult scheduling requirements, making it hard for the women in those jobs to schedule appointments for two visits. Child-care costs and availability also are barriers to low-income women.

Women of color, who already face health disparities that are directly related to inequities in income, housing, education and job opportunities, are unequally impacted by these restrictions. These Arizona laws have essentially stripped abortion care from many Native American women living in Navajo, Hopi, Hualapai and Apache tribal jurisdictions, among others.

Politicians intended to make it harder or impossible to access abortion in Arizona, and they’ve done just that for too many women.

We are not going to let our state be a place where people can no longer access abortion. We have filed a federal lawsuit to challenge these medically unnecessary laws that attack women’s constitutionally protected right to access abortion services.

We won’t rest until every Arizonan has access to the full range of reproductive health care services – including abortion.

Bryan Howard is president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Arizona.