The Arizona legislature is passing a lot of anti-choice legislation this year. One bill defines pregnancy as beginning on the first day of a woman’s menstrual cycle, which we know is a scientific impossibility. For convenience, doctors calculate the due date of a pregnancy at 40 weeks after the first day of the woman’s last period. But pregnancies only occur roughly 11-21 days after the first day of a woman’s period. We know this because the uterine lining must regenerate after the menstrual period in order to be thick enough to allow implantation. So, even though we talk about a 40-week gestation, it’s really more like 38 weeks. When women have their 20-week ultrasound that tests for abnormalities in the developing fetus, that really occurs at about 18 weeks. That’s why the Arizona legislature wants to ban abortions after 18 weeks, because that would keep women from having a good ultrasound before the cut-off.
Another bill passed by the Arizona legislature removes any criminal or civil liability if a doctor fails to tell the parents about significant abnormalities in the pregnancy because they fear such information will result in an abortion. Your doctor can simply lie by omission without that being against the law.
Both of these laws are designed to prevent parents from learning about problems with their pregnancies, effectively taking away their choice about whether or not to become parents to a severely disabled or doomed child.
The intrusion into the doctor/patient relationship seems particularly egregious to me, as it undermines the moral standards of medical practice.
But, apparently, the court is okay with this law. At least, they are so far.
