A state law (HB 2036) was passed and signed awhile back that tasked us with several things related to the regulation of abortions in AZ.  Among them were provisions directing us to develop a parental informed consent form for minors and establish a website with a host of information identified in the statute. 

Our next task is to conduct a Rulemaking to update our abortion clinic regulations so that they’re consistent with Arizona law.  The statute was prescriptive, so the rulemaking should be pretty straightforward.  We’ve posted our first swipe at the new draft regulations – which are now out for public comment.  We’ll be going through a couple of rounds of public input…  and we expect to establish the final new abortion clinic rules by early Summer. 

By the way…  we publish a comprehensive annual report with abortion statistics and demographic characteristics every year.  The report includes data compiled from reports of elective abortions and complications resulting from an abortion among other data.  Last year’s report found a 7.4% year-to-year decrease in overall abortions.