Tag Archives: Nancy Barto

Arizona Senate Bill 1394 Seeks Additional Abortion Restrictions

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The Arizona Legislature is at it again. Just in case Arizona state laws aren’t intrusive enough, state Sen. Nancy Barto has introduced SB 1394, a bill that would require doctors to ask patients why they are seeking an abortion. SB 1394 would add to Arizona’s already robust reporting requirements, bordering on harassment.

SB 1394 will be heard at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, February 14, by the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

Arizona already requires people seeking abortions to disclose all kinds of personal information, including age; race; ethnicity; marital status; educational background; and number of prior pregnancies, miscarriages, and abortions. SB 1394 inserts the government even deeper into the doctor-patient relationship with questions that are much more intrusive, such as:

  • Can the patient afford a child?
  • Does the patient not want children?
  • Was the patient raped?
  • Is the pregnancy a result of incest?
  • Did the patient or the sexual partner have an extramarital affair?
  • Was the patient abused by the would-be father?

SB 1394 would require doctors to report the answers of the survey to the Arizona Department of Health Services. Continue reading →

Meet Our Candidates: Tonya MacBeth for State Senator, LD 15

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The Arizona primary election will be held on August 30, 2016. Reproductive health care access has been under attack, both nationally and statewide, but Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona has endorsed candidates who have shown strong commitment to reproductive justice. To acquaint you with our endorsed candidates, we are running a series called “Meet Our Candidates.” In order to vote in the primary election, you need to have been registered to vote by August 1. Missed the deadline? You can still register online for November’s general election. Make your voice heard in 2016!

Tonya MacBeth cropped[T]onya MacBeth is running for the state Senate in Arizona’s Legislative District 15. LD 15 covers the northwest, north, and northeast areas of the Valley with approximately 133,019 registered voters. In 2012 and 2014, Republican candidate Nancy Barto did not have a Democratic challenger. However, this year Tonya MacBeth is putting up a fight for Democrats in the district.

“Without appropriate sexuality education, being a teenager is harder than it has to be.”

Ms. MacBeth generously shared time with Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona in person over coffee at the Urban Beans and Cafe on July 15, 2016, to discuss her background and her campaign

Tell us a little about your background.

I have lived in Arizona for more than 40 years, arriving here as a toddler. I attended both public and private schools in Phoenix, and graduated from Camelback High School. I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona, and returned to Phoenix and married my husband Doug. Doug is a retired Phoenix firefighter/paramedic. We have been married for 25 years and live in Cave Creek with our two children, Hannah and Jacob. Continue reading →

Telling the Truth About Abortion Politics

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Sens. Yee and Barto asked. We answered. It’s Our Turn to share the truth behind abortion politics. We have submitted the following op-ed to the Arizona Republic, but they have not (yet?) published it.

Thank You PP croppedAs a medical professional, I am dismayed at the recent “Our Turn” published in the Arizona Republic titled, “Make doctors tell the truth on abortion drug.” I would like to do just that — tell the truth and correct the record, because the opinion by legislators Barto and Yee was laden with revisionist history, misstatements of legal fact, and most important, non-medical junk science.

Doctors practice up-to-date, evidence-based medicine. I appreciate lawmakers repealing their intrusive foray into the practice of medicine, SB 1324. This law attempted to mandate how doctors dispense abortion medication according to an outdated, 16-year-old protocol contained in the original drug label. SB 1324 was an attempt to re-start a legal case that Arizona was losing. Despite the FDA’s update of the drug label to reflect current medical practice, policymakers and the governor stubbornly insisted on enacting SB 1324. Why, I cannot imagine. The repeal of this legislation was certainly welcome.

Real doctors reject junk science. More disturbing than the FDA label issue is Sens. Yee and Barto’s assertion that “at least 170 healthy babies have been born when medication abortions were reversed.” There is no scientific support for this assertion, just as there is no peer-reviewed medical evidence for the whole notion of “abortion reversal.” A handful of doctors with a moral agenda have attempted to use progesterone to “stop” a medication abortion. However, there is nothing in the literature to justify this practice, save for one report of six informal clinical anecdotes. No significant sample size, no control group, no oversight, no peer review. Regardless, last year these same legislators passed SB 1318, violating physicians’ and patients’ constitutional rights by forcing physicians to inform their patients that it is possible to reverse a medication abortion, which is untrue. Continue reading →

28 Bills Later: Cathi Herrod’s Horror Show Continues with SB 1318

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Gynotician Meme

Image adapted from flazingo.com

In February, Sen. Nancy Barto (R-Phoenix), introduced SB 1318 in the Senate. It is a harmful bill barring abortion services from coverage in Arizona’s health care exchange. SB 1318 is the latest in a long series of legislative attacks on reproductive rights in Arizona — the 28th abortion restriction to be introduced since 2009, according to Dr. Eric Reuss of the American Congress of Obstetrics & Gynecology (Arizona Section), who wrote an editorial for The Arizona Republic expressing his and other doctors’ opposition to the bill.

Ask your senator to vote NO on SB 1318!

A wealth of bad ideas was necessary to produce more than two dozen anti-abortion bills, and this newest bill is the product of some of the worst of those ideas so far. For starters, SB 1318 takes on a problem that is all myth and no reality. The idea behind the bill is to keep people who are opposed to abortion from having to fund it — and, in the process, save them money. But the Affordable Care Act included a payment system to ensure that taxpayer funding of abortion wouldn’t happen. When The Arizona Republic checked Sen. Barto’s claim that “Taxpayers are on the hook for elective abortions,” the paper found the statement unsupported. As the Republic summarized, “Federal law already prevents insurance companies from using tax credits and subsidies to cover elective abortions. And federal funds are not allowed to be used to fund abortions with three exceptions — rape, incest or when the life of the mother is threatened.” Continue reading →