You might not know it from the ads on TV and online, but abortion is now legal in Arizona.

In fact, doctors are free to treat miscarriages and other health crises at the end of pregnancy as they and their patients see best.

However, according to Proposition 139 selling point, our state looks like something out of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the only way out of this dystopia is to change our constitution.

The Arizona Legislature has already adopted a clear, common-sense system to handle the controversial issue. A moderate course is drawn, avoiding the extremes of the partisans on both sides.

Arizona’s abortion law is reasonable

Current state law allows abortion up to the 15th week of pregnancy and beyond case of medical emergencies.

It also provides important safety measures to protect girls and women from other health complications. A surgical abortion or an abortion pill prescription must be provided by a qualified physician.

doctor perform an ultrasound to ensure that the pregnancy is not further along than is safe for a chemical abortion and to rule out a dangerous ectopic pregnancy.

Finally, a minor must obtain the consent of a parent or legal guardian before obtaining an abortion. None of this is dystopian.

It’s firmly in line with the majority view that, as Bill Clinton said, abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

If Kamala Harris dared to use that phrase today, she would be kicked out of the Democratic Party for heresy.

It mirrors where most of us are

If you believe that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, or that abortion should have no limits, you will not like Arizona’s current law. But neither position reflects the view of the majority of voters.

Proposition 139 seeks to overturn our state’s common-sense compromise with vague and overbroad language that guarantees challenges in court and in the future.

He would consecrate the following language in our state constitution: “the state shall not enact, adopt, or enforce any law, regulation, policy, or practice which … denies, restricts, or interferes with that right before viability … (or) after viability which, in the judgment of good faith of a health care professional, is necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of (the woman).”

Opinion: Proposition 139 goes too far on abortion

It prohibits anything that “penalizes any individual or entity for aiding and abetting” the abortion of a girl or woman.

This precludes any effective option to implement common sense safety protections for women or to enforce longstanding safety standards for physicians.

Proposition 139 would overturn common sense

If Proposition 139 is approved, the state will not be able to require a licensed physician to perform the procedure or explain the potential risks. Instead, only a “health care professional” is required.

Under the legal definition of the statethis term could include everyone from massage therapists to acupuncturists and chiropractors to veterinarians.

Another Arizona law requires a minor to seek a tattoo or piercing must have a parent present for the procedure.

Under Proposition 139, a minor seeking an abortion does not even need parental consent. The new “fundamental right to abortion” for “any individual” applies to a high school student as much as a full grown adult.

Holding a higher standard for a teenage girl getting her ears pierced at the mall than for a medical procedure as invasive as an abortion is the opposite of common sense.

The most obnoxious ads promoting Proposition 139 suggest that current state law somehow prevents full-spectrum medical care for pregnant women, especially those who have miscarried.

Even the attorney general Kris Mayes put that perception to reststating in June that “Nothing in the statutory language requires the attending physician to delay providing an abortion as necessary medical care until, for example, the patient is in sepsis, hemorrhaging, or otherwise at death’s door.”

Common sense is on the ballot. Proposition 139 will end it.

Mesa resident Jon Gabriel is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. On X, formerly Twitter: @exjon.

This article originally appeared on the Arizona Republic: Opinion: Arizona’s abortion law has fair safeguards. Don’t finish them