A lawyer with the Arizona attorney general’s office says a 2021 state “personhood” law that gives all legal rights to fetuses can’t be used to bring criminal charges against abortion care providers.
The comment from Assistant Solicitor General Kate Sawyer came during a hearing Friday on a challenge to the law.
Attorneys representing healthcare professionals say those who provide abortions are worried prosecutors will bring charges for crimes like assault and child abuse under the law.
They want it blocked as unconstitutionally vague.
A federal judge in Phoenix declined to block the “personhood” law last year but is reconsidering it now that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a person's right to abortion and bodily autonomy.