By Corinne Murdock |
Planned Parenthood of Arizona (PPAZ) expanded its services last week to include vasectomies after months in limbo awaiting court battles over the state’s existing abortion laws.
The medical director of PPAZ, Jill Gibson, revealed that vasectomy requests increased following the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling last June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade.
“We just started hearing that these patients really wanted to step up at this time,” said Gibson. “They recognized that, with their ongoing protected bodily autonomy, they still had a right to participate in preventing pregnancy in ways that maybe didn’t have the same importance as before the Dobbs decision.”
Planned Parenthood’s Southern Arizona Regional Health Center in Tucson will be the first clinic to offer these expanded services. PPAZ plans to roll out these services to other locations in the near future, with the Phoenix area slated to receive them next.
Gibson told The Arizona Republic that PPAZ hadn’t offered vasectomies for at least a decade. The renewed service costs $750 without insurance; PPAZ won’t offer reversals of these procedures.
PPAZ expanded their services despite the move of Arizona’s major cities to effectively decriminalize abortion. Tucson, Phoenix, and, most recently, Flagstaff all passed resolutions opposing the SCOTUS decision and encouraging their local law enforcement to deprioritize violations of abortion law.
Additionally, both the governor and attorney general support opposition to any restrictions on abortion. Gov. Katie Hobbs said on the campaign trail last October that she wouldn’t put any limits on abortion, even up to birth. Attorney General Kris Mayes has repeatedly promised to not uphold the law and go so far as to prevent county attorneys from enforcing abortion law, even as recently as last week.
State law currently bans abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation. The pre-statehood law banning abortion completely was nullified in the Arizona Court of Appeals in December after it declared the law unenforceable, though the court refused to repeal the law.
While PPAZ has modified its business model to offer more services, other abortion providers have resorted to crowdfunding to stay afloat. Desert Star Family Planning, an independent Phoenix abortion clinic, has requested $80,000 to remain open.
They have raised over $9,200 so far from just over 100 donors since launching the crowdfunding effort in early January.
Brittany Fonteno, the president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona (PPAZ), said in a January interview that despite the ruling nullifying the pre-statehood abortion ban, lawmakers were infringing on constitutional rights, which she claimed included abortion.
“They don’t want people to know what their rights are, they don’t want people to be able to make their own decisions about their bodies,” said Fonteno.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
