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Group With University of Arizona, Planned Parenthood Ties Petitioning to Make Abortion a Constitutional Right

May 24, 2022

By Corinne Murdock |

A new Tucson-based abortion rights group, Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom, began gathering signatures for a ballot initiative making abortion a right within the Arizona Constitution. The group filed their application last Monday. With a July 7 deadline, they have a little over six weeks to collect over 356,000 signatures to qualify. 

A University of Arizona (UArizona) College of Medicine professor and Tucson OB-GYN, Dr. Victoria Fewell, filed the application as the group’s chairwoman alongside the group’s treasurer: UArizona Senior Program Coordinator, Planned Parenthood Arizona Secretary, and former Pima County Democratic Party Executive Director Shasta McManus. 

McManus has been active with Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona (PPAZ), recently voicing over a biographical feature on avowed communist activist and Black Panthers supporter, alleged black militant, and University of California professor Dr. Angela Davis. Last week, PPAZ Chairwoman Chris Love bragged about her husband assaulting a black Trump supporter while at a pro-abortion rally in Phoenix.

The proposed constitutional amendment not only declared the right to elective abortions at any point in a woman’s pregnancy. It reads as follows:

Every individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which entails the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care.

Neither the state nor any political subdivision shall restrict, penalize, frustrate, or otherwise interfere with the exercise of the right to reproductive freedom, including: any individual’s access to contraception; pre-viability medical and surgical termination of pregnancy; or medical and surgical termination of pregnancy when necessary to preserve the individual’s health or life.

Neither the state nor any political subdivision shall restrict, penalize, frustrate, or otherwise interfere with a qualified, licensed healthcare professional providing medical services or any person providing non-medical services necessary for the exercise of the right to reproductive freedom.

The term ‘viability’ means the point in a pregnancy at which, in the good-faith medical judgment of the qualified, licensed healthcare professional, based on the particular facts of the case before the healthcare professional, there is a reasonable likelihood of sustained fetal survival outside the uterus with or without artificial support.

The activist group also began asking for donations.

The group filed the ballot initiative application about two weeks after the leak of a Supreme Court draft ruling determining whether abortions constitute a state issue.

Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.

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