An Arizona Supreme Court decision on Tuesday that will end virtually all abortions in the state puts the issue front and center in a battleground state that will play a crucial role in deciding the next president and the Senate majority.
Democrats immediately pounced on the ruling, blaming former President Donald Trump for the loss of abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court, reshaped by his three appointments, ended the national right to abortion and allowed laws like Arizona's, which was first passed in 1864.
“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,” Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. She pledged that prosecutors in her office would not enforce it.
Gov. Katie Hobbs, also a Democrat, said the ruling “only serves to create more chaos for women and doctors in our state," pointing blame at Republicans for a “never-ending assault on our basic rights.”
The decision will give Arizona the strictest abortion laws of the six top-tier battlegrounds that are likely to decide the next president. Georgia outlaws abortions about after six weeks, while Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania all allow abortions up to 20 weeks or later.
The ruling comes a day after Trump said abortion limits should be left to the states and declined to endorse a national ban after months of mixed messages and speculation.
Voters have consistently backed looser abortion laws when the question is put directly too them, including in conservative states such as Kansas and Kentucky. The issue has is credited with helping Democrats exceed expectations in the 2022 midterm elections.
In Arizona, the political fallout of Tuesday's ruling could be extensive. President Joe Biden has put abortion rights at the center of his campaign, as has Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego.
It also will intensify efforts by abortion rights advocates to put a ballot measure in front of voters that would restore the right to an abortion. And it will likely give a boost to Democrats seeking to win the legislative majority, giving them power over election laws in a battleground state.
According to AP VoteCast, a broad survey of the electorate, 61% of Arizona voters in the 2022 midterm elections said abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Just 6% said it should be illegal in all cases.
Two-thirds of midterm voters in Arizona said the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade was an important factor to their vote for that election.
About 6 in 10 Arizona voters in that election said they would favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.
Officials at Planned Parenthood said they would continue to provide abortions up to 15 weeks, as allowed by the Arizona courts, but will have to wind them down in the coming months.
The old law was first enacted among a set of laws known as the “Howell Code” adopted by the 1st Arizona Territorial Legislature in 1864, decades before Arizona became a state in 1912. Legislative researchers said it remained in the penal code in 1901 and was readopted in subsequent rewrites, including in the 1970s. The law allows doctors or others to be prosecuted for performing an abortion at any time unless the mother’s life is in danger. It does not include exceptions for rape or incest.