Andy Biggs’ anti-abortion record looms over Arizona governor’s race

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs sailed to victory in 2022 with a promise to protect abortion care. Now, that same issue is likely to be at the center of her reelection campaign.

Hobbs’ likely Republican opponent is Rep. Andy Biggs, who has spent his two decades in public life voting to curtail abortion access and making inflammatory remarks about the procedure. His campaign has been endorsed by multiple anti-choice groups, including Turning Point Action and the Arizona Freedom Caucus.

Biggs is so committed to his anti-abortion views that he openly wept while discussing the issue during a May 2020 interview.

“Each person is made in God’s image,” Biggs said, his voice breaking. “It is a gift from Him. Our obligation then is to protect life, particularly those who cannot protect themselves … That’s my witness and my testimony.”

More recently, Biggs wrote on X that “life begins in the womb” and said “Congress must protect the unborn and fight to ensure that Americans’ taxpayer dollars are never used to fund their slaughter.”

In Congress, Biggs co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act five separate times. If passed, the legislation would effectively ban all abortions regardless of state laws, imperil access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and some forms of birth control, and create criminal penalties for doctors who perform abortions.

“Purporting that a fetus has the same rights as a child creates chaos in the law, undermines the rights of pregnant people, and can prevent people from building the families they want,” Planned Parenthood said of the bill in 2024.

The proposed law would also override Proposition 139, which enshrined a right to abortion care into the Arizona constitution and was supported by 61% of the state’s voters. Hobbs endorsed the proposition, while Biggs opposed it.

Biggs has also supported so-called Born Alive legislation, requiring doctors to provide medical care to babies that survive abortions. This is an extremely rare occurrence, and federal law already requires doctors to provide life-saving care to newborns requiring it, regardless of the circumstances of their birth. Opponents say the actual purpose of these bills is to intimidate abortion providers.

In 2021, Biggs said Democrats’ opposition to Born Alive legislation was proof of their “craven desire to kill the unborn and the newly born.”

Prior to joining Congress, Biggs served in both chambers of the Arizona legislature, where he supported multiple efforts to impose an abortion ban at 20 weeks gestation. Some of these bills included no exceptions for rape or incest.

In addition to supporting Proposition 139, Hobbs signed a bill appealing Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban, which became enforceable after the Supreme Court nullified Roe v. Wade in 2022. Her reelection has been endorsed by the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All.

“Governor Hobbs has been a committed champion of reproductive freedom her entire career,” the group said in a social media post. “In her first term, she led the effort to repeal Arizona’s 1864 total abortion ban and approved over-the-counter contraception at pharmacies in the state.”

Biggs will compete in a July 21 Republican primary for the gubernatorial nomination against fellow Republican Rep. David Schweikert, who also identifies as an anti-abortion candidate.

A Noble Predictive Insights poll from May showed Hobbs leading Biggs in a hypothetical matchup by four points.