PHOENIX, AZ – Thomas More Society, on behalf of Arizona Right to Life, is asking the Arizona Court of Appeals to restore Arizona laws that require informed consent, an ultrasound, and a waiting period before an abortion, and that limit abortion by telemedicine. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge struck down the laws under the state’s 2024 abortion amendment.

The amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court, brief filed by Thomas More Society in Isaacson v. State of Arizona argues the trial judge went beyond the amendment voters approved. The amendment applies its strictest test only to laws that deny, restrict, or interfere with the right to abortion. The judge instead declared, without citing any evidence, that “virtually every regulation of abortion” interferes with that right and struck the laws down without examining each one.

“Arizona voters chose their words carefully, and the trial court ignored them,” said Mary Catherine Martin, Senior Counsel at Thomas More Society. “Other states passed amendments that reach any law that ‘delays’ or ‘burdens’ ‘abortion.’ Arizona voters chose narrower language, and their amendment reaches only laws that ‘deny,’ ‘restrict,’ or ‘interfere with’ the ‘right to’ abortion. A conversation with your doctor and an ultrasound do not interfere with a woman’s ‘right to’ abortion, and the court never asked whether they do.”

The Thomas More Society brief notes that the Arizona Supreme Court reviewed the amendment’s ballot language twice and found nothing misleading about it. In the second review, the court observed that no one had even claimed the language was ambiguous.

The brief also shows that the requirements the judge treated as coercive reflect mainstream medical ethics. It cites informed-consent guidance from the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and a National Academies of Sciences report that describes clear information, a chance to ask questions, and confirmation of voluntary consent as elements of abortion care. A Cochrane review of 65 randomized trials found that informed-consent measures improve patients’ understanding. Arizona already requires similar disclosures before surgeries, hospital procedures, and even midwifery care.

The brief also challenges the trial court’s reliance on testimony about the Turnaway Study, a long-term study of about 1,000 women often cited by abortion-rights advocates. The study’s own lead researcher wrote that carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term was not associated with mental health harm, a finding she said surprised her. The brief also points to a section of the study the court did not cite: 60% of women turned away because they had just missed a gestational limit said a week later that they were happy to still be pregnant.

“The trial court relied on a description of the Turnaway Study that the study itself contradicts,” said Christopher Galiardo, Staff Counsel at Thomas More Society. “Read in full, the evidence supports what Arizona’s laws do: give women time, information, and support. We’re asking the state’s Court of Appeals to apply the amendment Arizonans actually passed instead of the one abortion activists wish they did.”

Some of the blocked laws have been in place for years, including informed-consent requirements Arizona adopted in 2009, long before the amendment.

Read the friend-of-the-court brief filed by Thomas More Society on behalf of Arizona Right to Life, here.