Arizona Ballot Leaflets can Call Fetuses ‘Unborn Human Beings,’ Court Says

The Washington Post

14:31 JST, August 16, 2024

As Arizona prepares to give voters the choice of whether to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right in November, the state’s Supreme Court has ruled that informational pamphlets sent to all voters can use the phrase “unborn human being” to refer to embryos or fetuses.

The court said Wednesday that the language “substantially complies” with impartiality requirements, backing the majority-Republican legislative council that drafted the language. Two justices dissented. The ruling noted that the phrase is used in existing legislation but did not explain the justices’ thinking in further detail. A full opinion will be released later, the ruling said.

Arizona for Abortion Access, which is leading the ballot-measure campaign and sued to change the language, said in a statement posted on social media that the court’s decision “means that Arizona voters won’t get to learn about the questions on their ballot in a fair, neutral, and accurate way but will instead be subjected to biased, politically-charged words.”

“We are deeply disappointed in this ruling, but will not be deterred from doing everything in our power to communicate to voters the truth of the Arizona Abortion Access Act and why it’s critical to vote YES to restore and protect access to abortion care this fall,” the group said.

If passed, the Arizona measure would allow abortion until fetal viability, or about 24 weeks – the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. The state currently bans abortion in most cases after 15 weeks.

Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma (R), co-chair of the legislative council that drafted the language, said the wording is intended to help voters understand the current law, according to the Associated Press. “The Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling is correct,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision overturned a ruling by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge, who said the term “unborn human being” was “packed with emotion and partisan meaning” and ordered it to be replaced “with a neutral term.” In his ruling, the judge added that there was “plenty of evidence” that not every word chosen by the legislature was “neutral in character.”

While Wednesday’s ruling affects what can be printed on the informational pamphlets, the language on the ballot measure itself is determined by Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D), whose office has said the phrase will not appear there, the AP reported.

The legal wrangling over the phrase “unborn human being” comes amid a wider debate about abortion and “fetal personhood,” or the point at which a fetus becomes a person with legal rights, as The Washington Post reported this year.

A number of states have passed personhood statues, although a similar attempt in Arizona was blocked by a court, The Post reported. According to one law in Georgia from 2022, people are considered to be “homo sapiens at any stage of development that is carried in the womb,” while the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling this year that frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization were “extrauterine children” prompted legislators to enact laws to safeguard IVF patients and providers.

Earlier this week, Arizona joined a growing number of states to place the issue of abortion on the ballot this fall, after door-to-door activism gained more than half a million certified signatures – far more than the required number, as The Post reported. Missouri, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New York and South Dakota will have similar measures on their ballots, and others could follow suit.

Arizona is a key presidential battleground state, and abortion has become a central focus of Democrats’ advertising campaign since Vice President Kamala Harris became the party’s nominee. Recent polling has also shown a continuing trend toward supporting abortion rights in the United States.