Planned Parenthood Arizona is preparing to expand its Southern Arizona operations by 2027, with CEO April Donovan describing a plan to grow regional staffing by about 100 percent. Proposed changes include adding nurse practitioners, increasing doctors’ availability and training staff to provide vasectomies at every clinic. Further clinic-hour expansion is being considered; the plans do not specify that hours will double.
The Tucson Sentinel reported that the organization expects to increase its Southern Arizona capacity next year. Each clinic currently has one nurse practitioner onsite per day; the organization anticipates that could rise to two starting next spring. Doctors, now onsite three days a week, could be available five days a week.
More Hours, More Vasectomy Options
All seven Planned Parenthood Arizona health centers have added late-night hours one day a week. The Tucson Sentinel reported that the organization hopes to extend clinic hours further to better serve people working nine-to-five jobs. It also plans to train nurse practitioners at every clinic to provide vasectomies and make information about menopause services more readily available. In April 2024, the organization began offering vasectomies in Phoenix after demand at its Tucson clinic proved overwhelming; nearly half of the appointments were booked by Valley residents, the report said.
Fighting the Remaining TRAP Laws
Donovan said four so-called TRAP laws — Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers — remain in place and that the organization is working to overturn them. Arizona law bars nurse practitioners from providing abortions and requires parental consent or a judge’s approval for minors seeking the procedure.
Arizona voters approved the Proposition 139 amendment by more than 60 percent in 2024, a measure that recognized abortion access as a fundamental human right under the state constitution. Still, the article notes the state retains regulations on abortion access that can deter patients even with that constitutional protection in place.
Court Fight Over Waiting Periods Continues
In February, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge struck down several abortion restrictions, including the 24-hour waiting period, the requirement for two separate appointments and the ban on telemedicine prescriptions for medication abortion. The Tucson Sentinel reported that the ruling was under review by the Arizona Court of Appeals. A filing from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office used the labels “Reason Ban Scheme,” “Two-Trip Scheme” and “Telemedicine Ban Scheme” for the challenged restrictions, but does not establish their current status on appeal.
After the 24-hour requirement was overturned, Colin McCluney, a physician at a local Planned Parenthood clinic, provided same-day abortion care, according to the Tucson Sentinel. One patient, who was 12 weeks pregnant, received a medication abortion legally on the day she sought care.
A Statewide Decline in Public Clinic Access
The push for growth comes against a backdrop of shrinking public options elsewhere in the state. Arizona's total number of publicly funded family-planning clinics fell 8 percent between 2015 and 2020, from 232 to 214, according to Guttmacher Institute data. In 2020, those clinics served about 73,000 female contraceptive patients statewide, a 14 percent drop from 2015, and covered just 16 percent of women considered likely to need publicly supported contraceptive care, down from 18 percent five years earlier.
Guttmacher also found that while the number of Arizona clinics receiving Title X funding grew from 36 to 41 between 2015 and 2020, the new sites served far fewer contraceptive patients than those that had left the Title X network — a shift that followed all Planned Parenthood affiliates exiting Title X in 2019, though Planned Parenthood Arizona kept offering family-planning services through other funding streams. Between 2019 and 2021, more than half of a sample of Arizona women seeking reproductive health care said they had postponed it due to a lack of insurance or past experience with burdensome or unexpected costs.
A County Option for Affording Care
For people seeking reproductive-health or family-planning services in Pima County, county clinics offer fees on a sliding scale based on income, and Pima County says no one is refused service because they cannot pay.
Planned Parenthood Arizona funds abortion care through a separate fund, an effort Donovan has said was inspired by Eve Shapiro and Paul Gordon, who were recognized for establishing a local fund for long-acting reversible contraception. That recognition came at the Tucson Museum of Art Tea Party, themed “Illuminate the Way,” which raised money for most of Planned Parenthood's sexual health services apart from abortion itself.
