2012 Legislative Session: Great Gains for Arizona Families!

By Cathi Herrod, PresidentCenter for Arizona PolicyThe Final Victories of the Session  Governor Jan Brewer signed the 3 remaining CAP-supported bills on her desk last Friday and Monday.These three bills were no minor pieces of legislation. They were bold policies that will have a tangible impact on the lives of Arizonans.While I am sincerely grateful to Governor Jan Brewer for signing these bills, I am also thankful for the many legislators that supported these and the other CAP-supported bills.Earlier this week, we released our 2012 Family Issues Voting Record reporting on how every legislator voted on 12 key bills that impact life, marriage and family, and religious liberty. Take time today to find out how your legislator voted and send them a note with your thoughts. Please take time to send a note of thanks to the legislators who stood with us in defense of life, marriage and family, and religious liberty. You can be sure they have heard from those who oppose us.An Unfounded Overreaction   From the time Rep. Justin Olson introduced HB 2800, which says federal family planning funds that pass through the state cannot go to abortion providers, to the time Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law, Planned Parenthood told every media outlet that would listen that this bill would deny low-income families access to medical care.But as CAP Legislative Counsel Josh Kredit points out on the Foundations blog, there are nearly 200 clinics across the state that low-income families can visit to access care. What's more, the vast majority of these clinics actually offer more services than the 14 Planned Parenthood clinics in our state.Don't Believe the Polls  Recent polls nationwide show support for redefining marriage to supposedly be a 50/50 split with support for same-sex "marriage" growing. Yet as we all know, every time the people vote on marriage, they vote strongly in favor of defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Then we hear, "Well, the younger generation doesn't believe in marriage." Yes, we do have significant challenges to restore the value of marriage in our culture. But don't miss this fact tweeted by Family Research Council President Tony Perkins yesterday: if the votes of everyone 45+ were discounted in NC, the marriage amendment would have still passed by 8 percentage points. Check out this analysis by American Enterprise Institute.Highlights

• 13 is the number of Center for Arizona Policy-supported bills that were signed into law this session. Simply put, Arizona is a better place for families today than it was 5 months ago because of these bills.
• 51 is the number of CAP-supported bills signed into law since 2009 when Governor Brewer took office. These last 4 years show the difference we can make when we elect pro-life and pro-family leaders to the legislature and Governor's office.
• 114 is the number of CAP-supported bills signed into law since 1995. Each of these bills takes important steps to protect the foundational values of life, marriage and family, and religious liberty.