This article is part of a special series called “One in four: How abortion access shapes America.”
It is rare that anyone gets to stand at the intersection of being a patient in need of care, a lawmaker, and a health care provider. But that’s where I found myself in March. I am an Arizona state senator. I’m also a nurse practitioner and a mother of two. My husband and I live in Mesa, where we look after my sons, our two dogs, and three chubby cats.
Life is, as we all know, driven by the unexpected. We were not trying to get pregnant. In the last two years we had two failed pregnancies and had stopped actively trying. But I wasn’t on birth control either, and the moment I took that pregnancy test I had to fight the urge to hope.
With each ultrasound, it became clear that this pregnancy wasn’t progressing. Again.
With each ultrasound, it became clear that this pregnancy wasn’t progressing. Again. I had already suffered through a very traumatic incomplete miscarriage in 2022. I didn’t want to go through it again. Thankfully, the option was still on the table, and we scheduled an abortion. I felt at peace. For a moment, anyway.
What ensued after scheduling my procedure only cemented what I already knew: Republican officials don’t trust women.
At my first doctor’s visit with Planned Parenthood, I shared my bloodwork and ultrasounds with the doctor and we discussed that my pregnancy was not viable. In spite of this, she was required to ask me why I was having an abortion. She was required to tell me that I could consider adoption or parenting instead of abortion. She was required to tell me that if I chose to continue my pregnancy, the father would be required to provide me with financial support. She was required to give me another transvaginal ultrasound. She was required to ask me if I wanted to look at it. She was required by law to drag me through this line of disinformation, confusion, and untruths.
I stopped feeling peaceful and another feeling washed over me, drowning me with its paralyzing weight: anger. As a medical provider myself, my anger didn’t land on my doctor; she was as much a prisoner as I was. I was angry at the politicians who had put laws in place to force doctors to try to coerce their patients out of having an abortion, regardless of circumstance.
So, consequences be damned, I took back what power I had. I rose on the Senate floor and told my story to the world. I said I was getting an abortion, on the chance that some woman out there would hear my story and hold her head a little higher when she is forced to sit through this same outdated rhetoric crafted by power-hungry politicians. Women should not have to navigate this experience blind, and this was my one real opportunity to bring us together.
My abortion took place less than three weeks before the ultra-conservative Arizona Supreme Court handed down its decision to uphold a near-complete abortion ban, dating back to 1864. The only exception it provides is if the pregnant patient is actively dying.
At any point in time over the last 100-something years, the Arizona legislature could have repealed this ban and stopped the clock on the Supreme Court’s activities. Sadly, the bill to repeal the ban, sponsored by state Democratic House Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, sat collecting dust as Republicans danced around the issue and villainized women for political gain. They were busy pushing fetal personhood bills and finding legislative ways to punish the homeless and the poor, after all.
But through unwavering determination this past April, Democrats used every avenue at our disposal to apply pressure on the majority Republican caucus. The 1864 total abortion ban was bad for their election ambitions, and in an obvious act of political desperation, Republicans buckled and Democrats were able to secure the repeal of this very unpopular and frankly gruesome ban.
It was an interesting conundrum to watch Arizona Republican lawmakers stumble through this year. They knew this ban was horribly unpopular and that it was going to cost them politically. They didn’t want to allow a Democratic bill to succeed in solving the problem, but they didn’t want to anger their fringe base voters by sponsoring a solution themselves.
There is only one solution to this attack on our fundamental rights, and it lives in the November ballot box.
The fact is, when rubber hit the road, Republicans knew their position would cost them everything. There’s also the fact that most of these Republicans are dealing with crippling cowardice against the conservative Freedom Caucus of the Arizona legislature. This vocal minority of extremists pulls the strings on which Republicans gets challenged in the next primary election. They even published their support for the ban in a glowing statement. To challenge them is to play roulette with re-election. And the threat is real: They have successfully ousted multiple more moderate candidates to implement their far right puppets and mouthpieces.
Now, Republican leaders are back to throwing out their usual nonsense, saying that Democrats want unlimited “partial birth abortions” on demand all the way up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Not only will you find no record of Arizona Democratic legislators ever supporting such an idea, but there are no abortion providers in this state or the country who provide such services. It proves that the trusted Republican strategy lives on: “When you can’t win, lie.”
There is only one solution to this attack on our fundamental rights, and it lives in the November ballot box. We have to elect candidates who will protect abortion rights up and down the ticket, from the White House to the state legislatures. And the facts of the day remain that this means voting for Democrats.
Until the Republicans are willing to release their ransom of this issue, abortion rights will continue to erode all across the country. There seems to be only one language these politicians speak: the risk of losing power is all they will respond to. The time to act is now.
I will keep telling my story, without shame. All of us deserve to feel peace with the often difficult decisions we have to make about our bodies, our families, our futures. And I’ll see you in November.
