Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey Expected To Sign Three Abortion-Restricting Bills

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey is expected to sign three new measures that would restrict abortions, prohibit experimentation on tissue from aborted babies, and ban Planned Parenthood from the Arizona state employee payroll deduction contribution program.

The new legislation comes on the heels of an undercover video series exposing Planned Parenthood’s apparent practices of selling the body parts of babies it aborts on the open market, and altering the position of babies during abortion in order to harvest the most intact organs.

The Arizona state House approved the three measures. One bans experimentation on fetal tissue from aborted babies; another restricts medication abortions to seven weeks of pregnancy; and yet another bars Planned Parenthood’s participation in the state employee payroll deduction plan for charitable contributions. Last year, Ducey administratively issued the ban on state employee donations to Planned Parenthood.

Tucson.com reports Ducey is expected to sign all three measures.

Despite the attempts of Planned Parenthood and its allies to smear the undercover journalists who produced the videos, states continue to pass legislation redirecting the abortion business’ taxpayer funding to health care facilities that do not perform abortions, prohibiting late-term abortions, and requiring the same health and safety standards in abortion clinics that are also required in other outpatient surgical facilities.

“If you deal with the videos about Planned Parenthood, it’s very evident to me that this buy and sell of fetal tissue is going on,” said state Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, adding that there is a larger issue than the videos involved in the legislation.

“This is something we feel is inappropriate, which is to harvest body tissue from the fetus,” he said.

Planned Parenthood Arizona said the affiliate is not involved in the sale of fetal tissue. Its president Bryan Howard, however, acknowledged that other states’ affiliates have been involved in the practice.

Nevertheless, Farnsworth responded the issue is that the practice has occurred elsewhere and the legislation will ensure it does not occur in Arizona because it will be a crime.

State Rep. Stefanie Mach (D) objected to the measure banning aborted fetal tissue experimentation on the basis that it would prevent valuable research.

“Why wouldn’t you want to use that fetal tissue to help save lives in the case of all the research that goes into Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s and a myriad of other tragic and horrible diseases that lead to a loss of life?” she asked, according to Tucson.com.

Farnsworth, however, said the claim that fetal tissue is valuable for research is questionable.

Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPEDS), confirmed to Breitbart News that the claim – used by Planned Parenthood supporters in the wake of the video exposé – is spurious.

“Selling organs of aborted babies for fetal tissue research is unnecessary and prolongs human suffering,” she said. “Fetal tissue research, like embryonic stem cell research, has failed to produce a single successful treatment for human disease, and both have been associated with significant side-effects including overgrowth of cells and the need for immunosuppressive chemotherapy.”

Cretella further explains:

Adult stem cell research, in contrast, has yielded treatments for 73 different diseases including several forms of cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s, cardiac disease, autoimmune illnesses and more. Adult stem cells do not overgrow or require immunosuppression, and most importantly, they do not require the killing of innocent human life.

Each dollar spent on fetal tissue transplants from aborted babies and embryonic stem cell research is a dollar not spent on expanding the success of adult stem cell therapies.

Cretella also makes a sharp ethical distinction between fetal tissue and aborted fetal tissue.

“While it is true that useful insights about fetal development, genetic defects and gene activation have been and can be gleaned from fetal tissue research, only research upon spontaneously miscarried infants is morally licit,” she said. “The bottom line is this: the slaughter of unborn infants in the womb as described by Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Deborah Nucatola is blatantly immoral. It is a national disgrace that anyone – most especially a doctor – defends its practice.”

The measure limiting the administration of abortion medication RU-486 to the first seven weeks of pregnancy meets the label directions of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the gestation period – though there is no law behind the time restriction.

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked an earlier similar abortion medication restriction measure, making it unlikely this bill could be enacted in the near future if signed into law.

Though Planned Parenthood has denied any wrongdoing in its sale of body parts, the abortion business also released a statement in October announcing it will no longer accept payments for aborted fetal tissue. The organization and its leftwing media supporters continue to insist the undercover videos – produced by Center for Medical Progress (CMP) were “deceptively edited.”

However, a Democrat opposition research firm named Fusion – hired by Planned Parenthood to review the videos – said while their analysts observed the videos had been edited, “the analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.”

Additionally, Fusion noted, “[A]nalysts found no evidence that CMP inserted dialogue not spoken by Planned Parenthood staff.”

An analysis by Coalfire, a third-party forensics company hired by Alliance Defending Freedom, found that the videos were “not manipulated” and that they are “authentic.”

Nevertheless, Planned Parenthood and its supporters continue to condemn CMP.

Under suspicion of bias, Harris County, Texas District Attorney Devon Anderson convened a grand jury that cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing in the video exposé and, instead, indicted CMP project lead David Daleiden and his colleague Sandra Merrit.

Two pro-choice law professors, however, wrote that the indictment of Daleiden and Merrit amounted to “a stunning act of legal jujitsu” and was a “deeply disturbing” outcome both for the First Amendment and undercover citizen journalists attempting to expose corruption.