This November, Arizonans will have the opportunity to vote on whether to enact a state constitutional amendment that would create a fundamental right to abortion. Activists in favor of the amendment claim that “voters clamored to sign” a petition to put the amendment on the ballot. But what does the ballot measure really mean?

To fully understand the measure, it’s important to first understand Arizona’s current abortion laws, which allow abortion for any reason up to 15 weeks gestation, and throughout pregnancy if the mother’s life or physical health is in danger. In 2021—the year before Arizona’s 15-week law was passed—only 5.9% of all abortions in Arizona took place after 15 weeks. In other words, Arizona’s current law allows the vast majority of elective abortions and any abortion necessary to save a woman’s life.

So why does Arizona—a state that allows most abortions—need a constitutional amendment protecting them? The claim is that “lawmakers won’t stop limiting abortion access.” But recent history doesn’t support that argument. As amendment proponents acknowledge, Arizona lawmakers recently repealed an 1864 statute that would have prohibited abortion more broadly. It seems unlikely that Arizona lawmakers would be eager to reenact a similar statute anytime soon.

Regardless, what amendment proponents fail to acknowledge is that the Arizona ballot measure would go much further than “restoring” the status quo before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Under that regime, states could regulate abortion so long as they did not unduly burden a woman’s ultimate decision whether to bear a child. The legal standard in the proposed ballot measure is quite different. It states that the government may “not enact, adopt or enforce any law, regulation, policy or practice that…denies, restricts or interferes” with the “fundamental right to abortion” “unless justified by a compelling state interest that is achieved by the least restrictive means.” In plain English, that means the government can’t regulate abortion unless it can prove it has an exceedingly good reason and does so in the least restrictive way possible. That definitely goes further than Roe v. Wade did.

Conspicuously absent from this standard is any requirement that interference with abortion be “undue.” Instead, the language of the ballot measure seems to suggest that even minor interference with the abortion right triggers the highest legal scrutiny—even if the law in question doesn’t prevent a single Arizona woman from having an abortion.

In practice, this standard—if enacted—could not only call into question Arizona’s 15-week law, but all of Arizona’s laws governing abortion, no matter how sensible. For instance, Arizona requires that only physicians may perform surgical abortions and that women receive specific informed consent information at least 24 hours before an abortion. Those laws could be challenged as too restrictive under the amendment.

This danger is not merely theoretical. Such lawsuits are already occurring in Michigan and Ohio, which enacted similar constitutional amendments in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

The proposed ballot measure is far more extreme than Arizona’s current abortion laws. Current Arizona law represents a compromise—it allows most abortions but doesn’t tie the legislature’s hands by preventing it from imposing commonsense regulations to protect women’s health and safety and the dignity of unborn life. And it’s precisely this sort of compromise that the Supreme Court made possible when it returned the issue of abortion to the people and their elected representatives.

Arizona voters should say no to enacting a constitutional amendment that will leave abortion unsafe and unfettered.

Julia Payne Koon is legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) and its Center for Life.