Pro-Life Republican… Ushers Two Life Bills Into Law At Arizona Capitol
By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — The prime sponsor of two new life-issues laws in Arizona told The Wanderer it’s unfortunate that the topic has become so partisan.
“Any time we deal with the lives of preborn children, it becomes an unbelievably partisan discussion,” said pro-life Republican Arizona State Sen. Nancy Barto. “It’s very disappointing.”
Later she added during the April 16 interview, “It’s unfortunate it’s that way,” regarding partisanship.
Although Barto didn’t delve into the history of this development during the interview, pro-lifers have seen the Democratic Party purge itself of numerous pro-lifers, both its own voters and its politicians, in recent decades.
Democrats for Life of America (democratsforlife.org) tries to keep the flame alive, but it’s opposed by massive establishment pressures in politics and media. The pro-life Dems’ website announces a national conference in Denver July 20-22 titled, “I Want My Party Back!”
In 2017, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, formerly Barack Obama’s secretary of Labor, said that not only every Democrat but also every American should be pro-abortion. In typical cowardly Dem doublespeak, because they’re still afraid to openly call for unlimited killing of preborn babies, Perez framed permissive abortion as “choice” and “health.”
“That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state,” Perez said. He even shocked pro-abortion House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who correctly understood Perez to be calling for more voters to leave or be forced from the party.
Barto’s two bills recently signed into law by pro-life Arizona GOP Gov. Doug Ducey deal with protecting in-vitro embryos in the case of divorce and reporting abortion information.
She said that courts “didn’t have any legislative guidance clarified in law” about custody of embryos of a divorcing couple, so the result amounted to judges making law. Her new law provides “a commonsense solution,” she said.
An April 3 news release from the pro-family Center for Arizona Policy (azpolicy.org) recalled the case of Phoenix woman Ruby Torres, who wanted to bring her frozen embryos to term, although her divorcing husband didn’t want to incur financial obligations toward them.
The news release said a Superior Court judge said Arizona law is silent on the matter, and ordered the embryos donated to a fertility bank or another couple — although Torres had undergone cancer treatment and feared she was losing her only opportunity for biological children.
By signing the bill, the release said, Ducey “made clear that public policy favors awarding the embryos to the spouse most likely to bring them to birth.”
In the news release, Center for Arizona Policy President Cathi Herrod said: “Sponsored by Sen. Nancy Barto, SB 1393 ensures that spouses in Ruby’s position will be awarded the embryos and will not be at risk of losing them to a third party.
“The bill properly balances the interest of both spouses because it provides that the spouse that does not want the embryos is not liable for any child support for any resulting child, and that any resulting child does not have any legal interest in that spouse,” Herrod said.
The other new law, SB 1394, seeks to improve reporting of abortion information while protecting patient privacy.
Barto told The Wanderer that Arizona wants to have “best practices in our abortion-reporting process,” with the “most accurate and updated, comprehensive” information available. “It informs public-policy decisions going forward.”
Like the previous law, the new law asks women why they want the abortion, Barto said, but they can decline to answer that. The law has a “possibly life-saving provision” to protect women from being coerced into abortion, she said.
She cited the case of a woman who’d already had two abortions being involved in sex-trafficking.
“We shouldn’t miss these critical engagement opportunities,” she said.
In an April 14 news release, the Center for Arizona Policy’s Herrod said: “Most importantly, the new law provides another way for health-care providers to assist women who have been victims of sex trafficking, sexual assault, or domestic violence to seek help and services. Additional measures strengthen the privacy protections in current law.”
Pro-abortionists saw this reporting bill as a hindrance to abortion. To them, it seems, any pause however brief before abortion is a discouragement of abortion.
Would they consider it as unreasonable if a woman was asked by a surgeon why she would want her healthy arm or leg cut off? But they take for granted the destruction of a healthy baby of a healthy mother.
Noting that pro-life Democratic State Sen. Catherine Miranda voted for both of the bills, Barto said, “You have to buck your party” to be a Democrat and vote this way.
Barto said she thinks voters in her district and the state have a strong interest in protecting life, both preborn and born. She served five years in the Arizona House and is in her fourth two-year term in the State Senate.
