PHOENIX — An Arizona state senator told her fellow lawmakers Monday afternoon that she needs an abortion, using her experience to criticize restrictions on the procedure passed by the Legislature.
Sen. Eva Burch, D-Tempe, spoke on the Senate floor at the end of Monday’s session, describing her struggles with fertility and detailing her experiences with miscarriage and abortion.
“I don't think people should have to justify their abortions,” Burch said. “But I'm choosing to talk about why I made this decision because I want us to be able to have meaningful conversations about the reality of how the work that we do in this body impacts people in the real world.”
Watch her full speech in the player below:
She also threw her support behind an effort for a constitutional amendment that would protect access to abortion in Arizona.
“I truly hope that Arizonans have the opportunity to weigh in on abortion on the ballot in November,” she said. “We know that the majority of Arizonans support the right to abortion.”
Burch, a nurse and mother of two, told her fellow senators she learned she was pregnant a few weeks ago, “against all odds.” However, numerous ultrasounds and blood tests showed her pregnancy was not viable.
“Right now, the safest and most appropriate treatment for me, and the treatment that I choose, is abortion,” she said. “But the laws that this legislature has passed has interfered with my ability to do that, along with countless others.”
Burch said her experiences both as a nurse and a patient have shown her that the Legislature “has failed the people of Arizona.”
“Arizonans deserve the freedom and the liberty to make those decisions for themselves,” she said. “I will never try to force someone to have an abortion. Nobody should have ever tried to prevent me from having mine.”
Burch said she had visited an abortion clinic on Friday but was still pregnant on Monday because of Arizona’s abortion laws, which require an ultrasound, hearing about alternatives to abortion, and the state’s mandatory waiting period.
“I didn't have an ultrasound because my doctor thought I needed one,” she said. “I had one because legislation has forced me to do that, an invasive transvaginal ultrasound that I didn't want or need to have performed by someone who didn't want to have to do it.”
Arizona law also requires medical providers to tell patients certain information. The disclosures included things Burch said were “just transparently, factually false,” as well as information that didn’t apply to her situation.
"I was told that there were alternatives to abortion, parenting, or adoption among them, as if delivering a healthy baby is an option for me. It is not,” she said.
Arizona also had a mandatory waiting period after the first appointment. Burch described the requirement as “often totally inappropriate and potentially dangerous.”
“The clauses for emergencies aren't good enough,” she said. “These laws can serve to intimidate doctors, and it muddies the waters when they're trying to make complex decisions in situations that are really volatile.”
During a previous abortion, Burch said, she started to miscarry the night before her procedure.
“Doctors and patients should be making those determinations, not legislators don't have to suffer through the consequences themselves,” she said.
Decision-making in the Legislature “should be grounded in expert testimony and in consensus from both the medical community and from constituents and free from political posturing and partisan bias,” Burch said.
