Planned Parenthood abandons lawsuit challenging Arizona pro-life laws

November 4, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Denver Newsroom, Nov 4, 2020 / 05:11 pm (CNA).- Planned Parenthood on Tuesday dropped a lawsuit challenging several abortion restrictions in Arizona, including a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions, laws that bar non-physicians from carrying out abortions, and state laws against telemedicine abortions.

In a notice dated Nov. 3, Planned Parenthood Arizona voluntarily and without explanation dismissed its lawsuit against Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich, which it had first filed in 2019.

PPAZ says the pro-life laws it was fighting have reduced the number of abortions it has performed in the state by 40% since 2011.

Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, told CNA that Planned Parenthood tried to argue that the combination of Arizona’s various pro-life laws created an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to choose abortion.

The Center for Arizona Policy has been advocating for various pro-life measure in Arizona for several years, working with the Arizona Catholic Conference and the Bioethics Defense Fund to craft policy, Herrod said.

“It’s a great day for Arizona women and for preborn children. Planned Parenthood challenged laws that basically provided for women’s health and safety,” Herrod told CNA in an interview.

In the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood had challenged several laws in Arizona pertaining to abortion including provisions that “effectively prohibit anyone other than a licensed physician from providing abortions and related services,” as well as a ban on the use of telemedicine to prescribe abortion pills.

“The laws that were challenged by Planned Parenthood were all common-sense regulations that would apply to most any other medical procedure, so it’s very good news that they dropped this lawsuit,” Herrod continued.

Denise Harle, Senior Counsel for the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, also welcomed the dismissal as a boon for the women of Arizona.

ADF, along with a Phoenix-area pro-life pregnancy center, had in March intervened in the lawsuit to defend the 24-hour waiting period provision in Arizona law.

“Abortion is a life-altering decision, and no woman should be rushed or pressured into it. That’s why we are pleased that Planned Parenthood has notified the court that it wants to drop its flawed challenge to Arizona’s common-sense protections for women, which are similar to those the U.S. Supreme Court has already upheld,” Harle said in a Nov. 4 statement.

“As many medical experts agree, significant, non-emergency medical procedures should not be performed without in-person consultation, or on a drop-in basis—let alone be performed by someone who is not a licensed physician,” Harle noted.

Planned Parenthood Arizona claimed in its lawsuit that the pro-life laws at issue have led to the organization performing 40% fewer abortions in the state since 2011, and have also led to the closure of four abortion clinics located in Yuma, Goodyear, Prescott Valley, and Chandler.

Arizona first imposed its 24-hour abortion waiting period in 2009. Courts blocked parts of the bill that brought about the waiting period, including provisions for mandatory counseling, until 2011, when they were allowed to go into effect.

At least 26 states mandate waiting periods for women seeking abortions, most of them 24 hours. Five states— Utah, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota— have a 72-hour waiting period in place.

The Supreme Court held in 1992 that 24-hour waiting periods did not did not impose an undue burden on the right to abortion. Federal courts had not struck down a state’s waiting period until this year, when in October a federal judge ruled unconstitutional a mandatory 48-hour waiting period for women seeking abortion in Tennessee, which had been in effect since 2015.

Arizona has passed several pro-life measures since 2009, including a provision that minors must have notarized consent from one parent to obtain an abortion. The state also in 2011 passed a ban on abortions based on the race or sex of the unborn child or based on the race of a parent.

In 2015, the Arizona legislature passed a law barring abortion coverage from all health plans offered through the state’s health insurance exchange.

During April 2018, Governor Doug Ducey signed into law a bill which requires doctors to ask women seeking abortions for a specific reason why they want to end their pregnancy, such as rape or sex trafficking. The questions are intended to helo women who are being coerced into abortion; women can refuse to answer.

Other states, such as Virginia, have in recent years moved to liberalize abortion access by allowing nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants to carry out the procedure.

During August 2019, an Arizona court awarded a former Planned Parenthood clinic director $3 million in damages in a wrongful termination case. The former employee, Mayra Rodriguez, claims that she witnessed physician malpractice, illegal conduct of a doctor, falsification of affidavits and patient records, and failure to report a minor who had an adult partner.

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Porn leaves men dissatisfied with real relationships, study finds

March 14, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Mar 14, 2017 / 04:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent analysis of 50 studies found that pornography was negatively associated with sexual and relational satisfaction among men.

 

The paper, entitled Pornography Consumption and Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis, concluded that “Pornography consumption was associated with lower interpersonal satisfaction outcomes in cross-sectional surveys, longitudinal surveys, and experiments.” Specifically, pornography was linked to significant “lower sexual and relational satisfaction” among male viewers.

 

The analysis included a combined 50,000 participants across 10 countries, and contradicts another recent study that claimed that pornography has a positive impact on its consumers.

 

“Pornography is sex-negative,” Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), said in a statement about the new analysis.

 

According to their website, the NCOSE is a national organization dedicated to opposing pornography by highlighting the links to sex trafficking, violence against women, child abuse, and addiction.

 

“Pornography rewires an individual’s sexuality to pixels on a screen rather than to a real person, which is inherently inconsistent with healthy, organic relationships. A wide body of research is bringing attention to the various ways pornography negatively impacts both women and men, and this latest meta-analysis contributes important findings to that on-going dialogue.”

 

Hawkins noted that the analysis contradicted a recent study,  Porn Sex Versus Real Sex: How Sexually Explicit Material Shapes Our Understanding of Sexual Anatomy, Physiology, and Behaviour, which claimed that pornography positively affected relationships and sexuality after asking participants about the perceived impact pornography was having on their life.

 

“Those researchers asked survey participants questions about the effects of their pornography consumption using a faulty methodology which could only yield positive results, and then presented the results as unbiased and valid despite the skewed methodology,” Hawkins added.

 

Pornography has been receiving increasingly negative attention as more groups and individuals highlight its destructive effects on people’s well-being and relationships.

 

Last year, the GOP at the Republican National Convention declared pornography a public health crisis as part of their platform, a few months after the state of Utah declared the same.

 

British comedian Russel Brand, actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rashida Jones, and former NFL player and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” actor Terry Crews are just some of the celebrities that have recently spoken out against pornography, its addictive properties and its harmful effects on relationships.

 

Smartphones and other technology have made pornography more accessible than ever before, increasing the prevalence of pornography addiction. However, in response, numerous online community groups, smartphone apps and educational videos – both secular and faith-based – have launched, with the goal of helping people quit porn.

 

Still, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, strong biases in favor of pornography as a healthy part of sexuality still exist.

 

“Pornography is so pervasive today that many individuals grew up watching it and therefore assume it is a normal and healthy part of sexuality,” Haley Halverson, director of communications for NCOSE, told CNA.

 

“Yet, like cigarettes in the 1950s, we know that just because a practice is popularly accepted doesn’t mean it is healthy or beneficial.”

 

There have also been recent arguments made that pornography simply needs to be produced more ethically. However, Halverson said, it is not possible to make an “inherently unethical” practice more ethical.

 

“Pornography inherently involves dehumanizing a person by reducing them to a mere collection of body parts for one’s own selfish sexual pleasure. This is an inherently unethical way to view or treat another person,” she said.

 

“Some people may try to make pornography ‘less’ unethical in different ways, but but such attempts can never change the fact that pornography objectifies human beings. Only a society that rejects pornography can fully respect the human dignity of each person.”

 

 
 

 
 

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