Going backward in Arizona: Terrible 1864 abortion ban’s return is the result of Donald Trump
Donald Trump had really lousy timing to announce Monday that he wanted to return abortion policy back to the states as it was before Roe v. Wade and promptly on Tuesday, Arizona returned back to 1864, with an ancient ban on the medical procedure. Oh, Arizona is one of the five states that Trump won in 2016 and then lost to Joe Biden in 2020. Oops.
What’s next, some ban going back to colonial times?
The political problem is all Trump’s as he scrabbles to contain the fallout he created, while Arizona doctors could soon face two to five years in prison for providing an abortion.
The old law that is the new law bans humanely and compassionately terminating pregnancies for rape and incest victims and in instances of certain fetal death or when the mother’s health would be irreversibly impaired, including making her unable to become pregnant again. The sole exception in the 19th century law is to save the woman’s own life.
As Trump likes to brag (and as he did so again on Monday), he did this, having stacked the U.S. Supreme Court with three hardliner justices who joined Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas to overthrow a half-century of settled law and stare decisis, apparently the Latin phrase for we get to do whatever we want to do.
Trump was correct after the Dobbs opinion came down nearly two years ago, that it would be bad for Republicans. And it’s getting worse.
But more important than the electoral prospects for Republicans and their nominee, Trump, abortion care, guaranteed to American women and girls in every state for decades, is being stripped away. The well-being of millions of real people is at stake in Arizona and who knows where else is next.
The Arizona Supreme Court decided that without Roe and no federal right to abortion, the clock wound back to the very beginning: 1864, when the Arizona Territory was created during the Civil War, being carved out of the New Mexico Territory.
This is not the Old West, it’s well before the Old West. In 1864, Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp was 16 and not yet living in the territory. He wouldn’t move to Tombstone for another 15 years. And the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral wouldn’t be until 1881.
Think about it, 1864 was 48 years before Arizona became a state (in 1912) and it was 109 years before Roe.
The majority justices of the Arizona Supreme Court didn’t write that they wanted to do this, but simply that the 1864 law had been enjoined since Roe and without Roe, the old came back to life.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has been urging the Republican legislature to erase the 1864 statute since she took office in January 2023, but she noted that both the GOP speaker of the House and the GOP Senate president backed an amicus “urging the court to do exactly what it did.”
Like we said before, oops.
Arizona voters may have an abortion question on the ballot this November (such a question is still yet to be certified) and if so, they will likely vote the same way Americans in every other state have voted to support abortion rights and oppose abortion bans.
And even if there is no referendum, the voters will know who set their state back 160 years.
