A Maricopa County judge recently struck down several abortion restrictions that limited access to care for women in Arizona, and one abortion provider in the state said she felt overwhelming joy and cried when she first heard the news.
Dr. Misha Pangasa, an OB-GYN at Planned Parenthood Arizona, said she felt those strong emotions because she thought about how much of an impact the ruling is going to have on improving care for Arizonans.
“I realized how much of my day had previously been spent trying to fulfill the checklist of all the random laws that we have that don’t actually apply to safe care,” she said.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Greg Como’s ruling found that several laws restricting abortion to women who have flexible time and resources are unconstitutional, because they violate the protections put in place by Proposition 139. Voters overwhelmingly passed Prop 139 as a ballot measure in 2024.
The Arizona Constitution explicitly prohibits the state from “implementing or enforcing any policy that interferes with a person’s right to abortion before fetal viability.”
Judge Como’s ruling struck down three laws that interfered with abortion access. One required a 24-hour waiting period between a patient’s consultation and the abortion, another was a ban on performing an abortion if the reason involved a fetal genetic abnormality or health diagnosis. The third was a ban on telemedicine to prescribe or provide abortion medication.
While patients and providers say they’re already feeling relieved, some infrastructure will have to be created before access fully expands in Arizona.
“Arizona has never had the provision of telemedicine care in its history [for abortion care],” Pangasa said. “So we haven’t created that option and implemented that yet.”
But other changes, like the 24-hour waiting period, have already been put in motion.
Explained: Why AZ doctors were fighting abortion rules in court
“We are working toward the process where everybody is just scheduled for same-day care,” Pangasa said. “By next week, [the 24-hour waiting period] should be fully phased out.”
Pangasa said she recently had a patient who she was able to help much faster than usual thanks to the waiting period being struck down.
“[She] was scheduled for just an ultrasound with the plan to schedule a subsequent abortion appointment,” Pangasa said.
But Pangasa said the woman begged her to perform the abortion on the same day, because she needed to pick up her daughter and she wasn’t able to miss another day of work without risk of being fired.
What next?
Arizona still has over a dozen other laws on the books that restrict abortion access, including one limiting abortion prescriptions and procedures to physicians and not physician assistants or nurse practitioners—widely seen as well-trained and capable of performing an array of repro care functions, including abortion, across many states in the US.
“We have very skilled and trained nurse practitioners and nurse midwives who can safely provide this care,” Pangasa said.
“While I’m so happy to be able to provide care to as many people as I can, I think that’s still something that creates a burden for the people of Arizona because there’s a lot of access that’s missed by not allowing that,” she said.”
Pangasa said many reproductive care providers viewed Arizona as a “no fly zone” of sorts, where they shouldn’t put down roots because of the state’s abortion restrictions.
“People aren’t necessarily putting Arizona on the ‘no fly zone’ anymore,” she said. “There are definitely people who I think will consider coming here because they know that they can practice the standard of care for reproductive health without having to worry about going to jail for it, or without worrying about the legal aspects of it.”
