PHOENIX (AP) — House Republicans on Monday are slated to debate a proposed ban on public dollars for abortion providers that could significantly limit health care access for Arizonans and would go much further than an existing federal mandate against abortion funding.
The measure seeks to revive a years-long anti-abortion debate in the GOP-led state Legislature and could further complicate Gov. Jan Brewer's stalled plan to expand Medicaid access to an additional 300,000 Arizonans under the upcoming state budget.
The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to review the last-minute amendment to Senate Bill 1069 on Monday. The measure prohibits government dollars from being used to indirectly subsidize abortion services, including funding for rent, employee salaries and other overhead or administrative costs.
"The basic pro-life concern is that every $1 that goes to an abortion provider for a health care service frees up another dollar to subsidize abortion services," said Cathi Herrod, of the influential Center for Arizona Policy, which advocated for the proposed abortion law changes.
Herrod said many taxpayers don't want their tax dollars subsidizing abortions.
"There is no question that supporting Planned Parenthood for any health care service indirectly supports abortion," Herrod said in a telephone interview.
The bill also would allow government officials to conduct unannounced inspections of abortion clinics if there is reasonable cause to believe the health center is violating state licensing requirements.
A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Arizona did not immediately return a call Friday morning. Under federal and state law, abortion clinics regularly provide non-abortion services such as cervical exams with public money.
"We are not prohibiting patients from going to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services. They are free to do that," Republican Rep. John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills, the House appropriations chairman, said in a telephone interview.
House lawmakers are also expected to begin work on a revised version of the Senate-passed state budget Monday.
Conservative Republicans oppose Brewer's plan to expand Medicaid access under the federal health care overhaul signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. But Brewer has said she won't sign a state budget that doesn't include it, making it a crucial fiscal issue. Washington would pay the entire cost of the Medicaid expansion for the first three years, then gradually phase down to 90 percent.
Herrod previously lobbied lawmakers to add a provision to the Medicaid expansion bill banning any funding for Planned Parenthood, but she said Friday that proposal likely would not pass legal muster. A bill defunding Planned Parenthood passed last year but has been blocked by a federal judge, and Brewer has said she won't back its revival in her Medicaid proposal.
Kavanagh said the anti-abortion fight shouldn't impact the Medicaid expansion debate.
"I'm sure it will be challenged," he said of the proposed funding ban. "But I think we have addressed the concerns that people had that we were preventing people from receiving non-abortion services."
Herrod said a growing demand for more inspections was prompted by a recent undercover video made by a national anti-abortion group showing a doctor and counselor at a Phoenix abortion clinic discussing the possibility that some aborted fetuses may show life after being removed from a woman's body, and the recent murder conviction of a Philadelphia abortion doctor whose clinic wasn't inspected.
"Abortion clinics are the only medical facilities in the state that are not subject to unannounced inspections," Herrod said. "So the intent of SB1069 is simply to treat abortion clinics like any other medical facility in the state. That should be a no-brainer."
Arizona law requires abortion clinics be inspected before they are licensed and during periodic relicensing. They also are subject to unannounced "snap" inspections if the Department of Health Services has reason to believe there are problems and gets an administrative warrant.
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