Arizona’s House of Representatives passed a bill on Monday that requires women to fill out a questionnaire that asks them about their reasons for the procedure.
The bill, SB 1394, passed 35–22 along party lines and will require women to answer questions such as whether the abortion is elective for economic reasons; if the pregnancy was the product of rape or incest; if the woman does not want children at this time; if the abortion is due to fetal or maternal health; and if the patient is having “relationship issues,” such as domestic abuse or an extramarital affair, according to HuffPost.
Another question asks patients about whether they had access to “adequate comprehensive sex education.” Lawmakers claim that questions like these aim to help women have fewer unwanted pregnancies. However, Arizona State Representative Daniel Hernandez (D) believes that it is “impossible to separate the question of how and why people got pregnant with the question of why they are seeking to terminate the pregnancy.”
Women in Arizona are not required to provide their names on the current questionnaire, but they are required to provide their ethnicity, age, race, marital status, educational background, and the number of prior pregnancies and abortions they’ve had.
Critics argue that making the questionnaire this invasive is designed to discourage women from going through with the medical procedure.
