PHOENIX — Arizonans appear ready to put a right to abortion in the state constitution.
Early returns show proposition 139 was being approved by a margin of 2-1.
If enacted, women would be able to terminate a pregnancy without state interference until the point of fetal viability. That is generally considered somewhere between 22 and 24 weeks.
But there is no fixed end date at which an abortion could be performed. After viability, it permits the procedure if a treating health care profession makes a “good faith judgment” that terminating the pregnancy is necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.
Foes, operating under the banner of It Goes Too Far, argued that language is really no restriction at all.
Aside from the fact that it allows any “treating health care professional” to make the judgment call — and not necessarily the woman’s own obstetrician — they said the exception for mental health amounted to allowing a pregnancy to be terminated at any point prior to birth.