Doctors warn Andy Biggs’ record on healthcare, abortion should alarm Arizona voters

Arizona doctors and progressive organizations are warning voters that Republican gubernatorial nominee Andy Biggs has a long record as an elected official of attacking access to healthcare and abortion care. 

Biggs will face off with Gov. Katie Hobbs in November to determine who will lead the state for the next four years. Among the stark policy differences between the two are healthcare and abortion rights. 

Hobbs ran in 2022 on a vow to preserve access to abortion, at a time when court rulings ricocheted the state between a 15-week gestational ban and a near-total prohibition from 1864. The Democrat has spent her first term doing just that, vetoing anti-abortion proposals from the GOP-majority legislature and issuing an executive order that prevented county attorneys from prosecuting abortion patients or doctors while the restrictive laws, which carried criminal penalties, were still in play. 

On the other side of the ideological divide, Biggs was a staunch supporter of Arizona laws to restrict abortion access while he was a state lawmaker, and since going to Congress, he has co-sponsored federal legislation that could effectively ban the procedure nationwide four times, including in 2025, months after Arizona voters chose to make abortion a fundamental right in the state. 

During an online news conference hosted by the Committee to Protect Health Care, local doctors called on voters to reject Biggs in November, saying that his track record shows he will undermine the ability of Arizonans’ to receive the healthcare they need. The organization represents medical providers across the country and advocates for accessible and affordable healthcare. 

Dr. Danielle Allen-Herried, an OBGYN in Chandler, said that voters shouldn’t be complacent about the legality of abortion in Arizona, even though the procedure is enshrined as a right in the state constitution. In 2024, voters passed Proposition 139, which guarantees the right to obtain an abortion until fetal viability, generally considered to be between 23 and 24 weeks of gestation, and forbids the state from enforcing or adopting policies that interfere with that right. 

But that hasn’t stopped Arizona’s Republican congressional delegation from continuing to back a federal ban or deterred Republican state lawmakers from passing measures designed to circumvent the abortion rights amendment. Reproductive rights advocates fear that awarding the governor’s seat to Biggs would usher in even more attacks on the procedure from GOP lawmakers, this time without a veto buffer. 

“I’m grateful that the voters of our state passed Proposition 139 back in 2024 to protect the right of reproductive care into our Constitution,” Allen-Herried said. “But we have to be vigilant against attempts from state leaders to chip away at that right.” 

Allen-Herried lambasted the political push to restrict abortion access, saying that it only serves to hurt and endanger women. She shared that, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022 and Arizona was vacillating between bans, one of her patients was forced to carry a pregnancy to term, despite a fetal diagnosis of anencephaly, a fatal condition in which parts of the brain and skull aren’t formed. 

Awarding Biggs the governorship, Allen-Herried said, would have devastating consequences for women across the state. 

“Arizona deserves a governor who believes that healthcare should be more accessible, more affordable and guided by medical evidence, not by political ideology,” she said. 

Dr. Eve Shapiro, a Tucson pediatrician who has worked with Arizona families for more than 40 years, highlighted the healthcare cuts Biggs has supported as proof that he is the wrong choice to lead the state. 

Last year, Congressional Republicans successfully negotiated a sweeping tax and spending package, dubbed “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” that slashed Medicaid spending and failed to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits that have proved critical for millions of Americans to afford their health insurance coverage. Biggs voted for the funding plan and vocally opposed reviving the insurance premium tax credits, falsely claiming that the program was rife with abuse.

The fallout from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has been deeply felt across the country. In Arizona, more than 121,000 people dropped their health insurance plans after the tax credits expired, and that number is expected to keep growing. The impact of the $880 billion cut to Medicaid is less immediately visible, in large part because the funding reduction is slated to start in earnest next year, but health policy experts project that they will lead to the closure of hundreds of hospitals and the loss of coverage for more than 11 million low income Americans. As many as eight Arizona hospitals are at risk of shutting their doors or dramatically reducing their services because of the funding loss. 

Shapiro, who said many of the families she works with rely on federally funded aid programs, like the premium tax credits or the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid program, said that making it harder for people to afford their health insurance leads to a harmful domino effect. 

“Health insurance means cancer is caught earlier, diabetes is managed before complications develop,” she said. “Children…get care for asthma, allowing them to be able to run and play safely with their friends, they get vaccines that keep them from getting preventable diseases.” 

In an emailed statement, Drew Sexton, the senior advisor for Biggs’ campaign, justified the congressman’s support for the federal cuts to Medicaid by saying that Arizona’s Medicaid system, AHCCCS, needed reforming. Sexton accused Hobbs of failing to curb fraudulent spending, though he offered no evidence to prove that claim. 

“Congressman Biggs voted for substantive and badly needed reforms in the Working Families Tax Cut package that gets Medicaid dollars to the Arizonans who need it most instead of to those who would abuse our system,” he said. 

Sexton did not respond to a question on whether Biggs would support efforts to further restrict abortion access if he were elected.