The state’s civil-war era law was reinstated and severely restricts abortion

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By Adeline G11

On April 9, Arizona’s Supreme Court reinstated a civil-war-era law that bans abortion in nearly all conditions, dismissing an earlier lower-court decision ruling that doctors couldn’t be charged for the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy. The law includes no exceptions for rape or incest – it is only allowed if the mother’s life is threatened by carrying the fetus to term. It originated in 1864, nearly fifty years before Arizona was granted statehood in 1864. When Roe v. Wade was implemented in 1973 this ban was invalidated, as the case ruled that states could not restrict abortion, but when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, it was legally able to be reinstated. 

Currently, about 1,100 abortions happen monthly in Arizona, but this will be threatened once the ban goes into effect. This will take anywhere from 14 days after the ruling to up to two months. Under the ban, which was passed by a Supreme Court that has only Republican-appointed justices, doctors will be prosecuted, with a sentence of two to five years in prison. This will also apply to providing abortion pills, which is the most common method of abortion in the United States.

This ruling puts abortion access as a central issue in a state likely to have a key role in the presidential election this November. Fourteen other states enforce bans on abortion in all stages of pregnancy, but Arizona now has the strictest abortion regulations of top-tier battleground states.

On April 17, a procedural measure that would’ve licensed the House of Representatives to vote on a bill to repeal the ban was shot down by Republicans for the second time, who not only have control of the Supreme Court but in both the House and Senate as well. Currently, there’s a Senate version of the same bill that Democrats are trying to advance, but due to procedural rules, this will take multiple days.

The decision to uphold the ban caused nationwide debate, with Democrats blaming Donald Trump for increased abortion restrictions across the country on account of how he appointed the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Several Republicans, including Trump, denounced the ruling in an attempt to moderate their previously more extreme views against abortion.