Gov. Brewer signs bill on abortion-clinic inspections

• House Bill 2284 eliminates the requirement that the Arizona Department of Health Services first get a warrant to enter an abortion clinic during regular business hours if there is reasonable cause to believe the clinic is in violation of licensing requirements.
• The law also makes it a crime to help a minor get an abortion in violation of state parental-consent requirements.
• The law goes into effect 90 days after the legislative session ends%2C which could be as early as this week.
• Planned Parenthood and ACLU of Arizona have said they are still considering whether they will file a legal challenge of HB 2284%2C but they do believe it is unconstitutional.

Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday signed into law House Bill 2284, eliminating a requirement that the Arizona Department of Health Services first get a warrant to enter an abortion clinic during business hours if there is reasonable cause to believe the clinic is in violation of licensing requirements.

The law goes into effect 90 days after the legislative session ends, which could be as early as this week.

"It was brought to our attention that every health-care institution in the state is subject to unannounced inspections by DHS if they have reasonable cause to believe something is going on inside, except for abortion clinics," said Center for Arizona Policy legal counsel Josh Kredit, whose organization wrote the legislation. "We're almost saying we value the women that go into abortion clinics less than everyone else."

Currently, according to the ADHS, the state can conduct warrantless, unannounced inspections of many facilities it regulates, such as hospitals, dialysis centers, nursing homes and child-care centers. But due to a court ruling, abortion clinics are treated somewhat differently; the agency can conduct scheduled visits, but it must get a search warrant for any unannounced inspections — even in response to a complaint of wrongdoing.

Planned Parenthood and ACLU of Arizona have said they are still considering whether they will file a legal challenge of HB 2284, but they do believe it is unconstitutional.

Planned Parenthood of Arizona President Bryan Howard said the point of requiring a warrant is to protect patients.

"The federal court has recognized that women receiving abortion health care have a heightened expectation of privacy that would be put at risk under the best of circumstances," he said. "The bill creates circumstances for health care to be interrupted and patients to be harassed and certainly for their privacy to be violated in the absence of any demonstrated need."

After a woman bled to death at a Phoenix abortion clinic, the Legislature in 1999 passed a law establishing a licensing process for abortion clinics and allowing unannounced inspections. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004 struck down parts of the law, including the inspections, saying it was too broad and would give the state unauthorized access to patient information.

In 2009, the two sides reached a settlement that gave the state more oversight of clinics but did not include unannounced inspections. Since then, the Legislature has passed dozens of additional regulations of abortion clinics, some of which have survived court challenges.

The state health department has sought only one warrant to gain access to an abortion clinic in the past five years. The inspection of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Glendale was conducted in February, four days before the legislative hearing on HB 2284.

Howard said the warrant was sought in response to an incident Planned Parenthood had self-reported to the state involving a patient who had complications during an abortion in early 2013. In order to protect the patient's confidentiality, he declined to provide additional details.

"They'd been sitting on the need for 10 months but then asserted in an affidavit submitted to the court that they needed immediate access to the health-care facility," Howard said. "Average Arizonans ought to harbor some serious concern about what at least appears to be the misuse of the public health system to justify legislation."

ADHS licensing officials reported six deficiencies that included employee files that didn't include proper documentation of employee qualifications; particular medical records that were not properly signed, dated and legible; a patient's chart that did not include required documentation of an ultrasound; and a patient's vital signs that were not properly monitored.

Howard said Planned Parenthood is disputing five of the six deficiencies and has requested a hearing. Staff has corrected the deficiency related to the unsigned and unclear record entries.

"On the majority of findings, we dispute that there are any violations at all," he said.

The Center for Arizona Policy's Kredit said the results of the inspection back up the argument for warrantless inspections.

"There were an number of patient-care issues," he said. "It is vital to be able to go in unannounced and check those things out."

He denied the timing of the inspection had anything to do with politics.

"It took DHS months to be able to coordinate with the Attorney General's Office and local law enforcement," Kredit said.

American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona Executive Director Alessandra Soler said the Center for Arizona Policy has a history of successfully pushing bills that end up costing taxpayer money to litigate.

"These are laws that were one after another an effort by CAP to impose their own religious and moral views on the women of Arizona," she said. "They are bad public policy, they're costly to litigate and to enforce, and ultimately they're unconstitutional."

The courts have recently ruled against three Center for Arizona Policy laws: a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy; a law restricting the state from reimbursing abortion clinics with Medicaid funds for non-abortion medical care; and regulations of medication abortions.

Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said the majority of the state's cost in recent abortion lawsuits has been from attorneys fees awarded to the abortion organizations that successfully fought the laws.

For the 20-week law, the state will pay $194,200 in attorneys fees for the plaintiffs. Maricopa County will also pay an additional portion. In the Medicaid case, the state will pay $295,500 in legal fees for the plaintiffs.

Kredit said he believes HB 2284 will survive a court challenge, despite prior rulings on the issue.

"The court said to be able to have unannounced inspections, you have to have a closely-regulated industry," he said. "It is our position that abortions are now closely regulated."