THESE ARE NOT THE DROIDS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

PHOENIX, April 1 – Gov. Ducey yesterday defended his decision to sign S1318 (abortion; health care exchange; licensure), but struggled to explain the provision requiring doctors to inform patients that they may be able to reverse their medication-induced abortions, focusing instead on the section barring abortion coverage in health care plans purchased through Arizona’s insurance exchange, which the governor described as the “main thrust” of the bill. “What we wanted to do was clarify the law. With Obamacare being the law of the land, we wanted to clarify that the state could opt out so that taxpayer dollars were not used for abortion,” Ducey said. The abortion-reversal language, which many doctors and other critics say is inaccurate junk science, is a matter of informed consent, Ducey told reporters. “While not the major part of the bill, it was part of getting more information out rather than less. Nobody is having anything taken away from them. They’ll have the same choices that they had before. And now they have more information,” he said. When asked whether his office had vetted the science behind the controversial new requirement on doctors who perform abortions, Ducey insisted that his staff and policy advisors had vetted the bill as a whole, but ducked the issue of whether anyone in the administration had actually explored the accuracy of the reversal provision. “What my office vetted was the bill that I signed. It was the bill in its totality. We’re comfortable with what was signed,” he said.