Arizona has spent the last year focusing hard on restricting abortion rights.  Now a newly enacted law will throw yet another roadblock.

Via Arizona Daily Star:

A judge refused to block the state from enforcing new regulations next week that an attorney for the state’s largest abortion provider said will impair the ability of women to terminate their pregnancies.

Judge Donald Daughton of Maricopa County Superior Court said Planned Parenthood Arizona waited too long before asking him to bar the Department of Health Services from enforcing a new rule prohibiting anyone other than a doctor from performing various medical procedures before or after an abortion. He pointed out the state approved the new rules at the end of April. But Daughton noted that Planned Parenthood did not file its legal papers until Oct. 14 – and the rules are set to take effect Monday.

Planned Parenthood President Bryan Howard said he did not know whether his organization would seek another way to block those rules. But he said the regulations, if implemented, will result in delays for women because there are not enough qualified doctors willing to perform abortions.

And Planned Parenthood attorney Eve Gartner said the longer the wait to terminate a pregnancy, the greater the risk to the patient.

The legal fight is an extension of a lawsuit that Planned Parenthood filed last year after the Legislature voted to prohibit anyone other than a doctor from performing abortions.

Daughton enjoined the state from enforcing that law, ruling that challengers were likely to prevail once the case goes to trial. That trial, though, remains on hold while his injunction is being argued to the Court of Appeals.

The new rules at issue say doctors must be the ones to do everything from determining the gestational age of the fetus to remaining on the premises until all patients undergoing any kind of surgical abortion are stable and ready to leave.

At a hearing Wednesday, Gartner told Daughton those rules amount to an end run by the state around his 2009 order.

She said the shortage of qualified doctors remains. Gartner said requiring a doctor to perform the pre- and post-abortion procedures would have the same net effect as requiring a doctor to do the abortion itself: a delay in care for women.

Assistant Attorney General Carrie Brennan did not argue the merits of that claim. Instead, she told Daughton that Planned Parenthood waited too long to seek the relief.

“Planned Parenthood could have filed in May,” when the final rules were published, she said. “And they didn’t.”

The group arguing for the legislation state they are only doing so because anything involving abortion should be performed by a licensed physician.  Of course, they have not pushed for the same rules for women seeking prenatal care.  I’m also curious how a doctor is supposed to determine fetal age when most of them are not trained to use ultrasound equipment.

But I suppose anything in the name of stopping abortions, right?