On Tuesday (Apr 9), the Arizona Supreme Court declared that the state can enforce its long-dormant 19th-century legislation, which criminalizes all abortions except when a mother’s life is in jeopardy. The verdict is yet another setback for reproductive rights in the state, where abortion is already prohibited beginning at 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The 1864 law makes no exceptions for rape or incest and bans abortion in nearly all cases
The 1864 law makes no exceptions for rape or incest and bans abortion in nearly all cases. A previous court judgment halted enforcement of the 1864 legislation shortly after the US Supreme Court issued the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion.
“We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgment, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens,” Lopez wrote.
“Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state,” she added.
Democratic President Joe Biden, in a statement called the Arizona ruling the “result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom.”
“Millions of Arizonans will soon live under an even more extreme and dangerous abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest,” he said.