LOS ANGELES: Arizona’s supreme court has ruled that a foetus can be described as an “unborn human being” on ballots when voters decide this November whether to make abortion a constitutional right.

Abortion has become a dominant political issue across the United States in this presidential election year, especially in key swing states like Arizona, where President Joe Biden defeated Republican Donald Trump by just 10,000 votes in 2020.

The Arizona ballot initiative would allow access to abortions for pregnancies up to 24 weeks after conception, a significant increase from the state’s current 15-week limit.

It would also carve out exceptions to “protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual,” which critics argue could become a legal loophole to allow abortions after fetal viability.

The state’s supreme court ruled on Wednesday that language drafted by a Republican-majority legislative council calling foetuses and embryos “unborn human beings” in fact “substantially complies” with impartiality requirements, a filing showed.

The Arizona secretary of state estimated a record 577,971 valid signatures were submitted to add the initiative to the state’s ballot, far surpassing the required threshold of 383,923 signatures.

The conservative-dominated US Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortions in June 2022, with many Republican-led states quickly moving to restrict or outright ban the procedure.

Earlier this year, the Arizona state supreme court upheld a total abortion ban dating back to 1864, which prohibited abortion at any stage of pregnancy unless it was necessary to save the mother’s life.

The ruling garnered widespread criticism and was repealed a month later by the Arizona state legislature, after several Republicans broke with their party, which is in the majority, to join Democrats.

Arizona’s current 15-week ban allows exceptions to save the mother’s life, but does not carve out exceptions for pregnancies from rape or incest. Several other states have abortion access ballot measures in the November election, including Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New York and South Dakota, with several others still pending.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2024