Arizona can enforce an 1864 law criminalizing nearly all abortions, court says

Jacques Billeaud
Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother’s life is at stake.

The case examined whether the state is still subject to a law that predates Arizona’s statehood. The 1864 law provides no exceptions for rape or incest, but allows abortions if a mother’s life is in danger. The state’s high court ruling reviewed a 2022 decision by the state Court of Appeals that said doctors couldn’t be charged for performing the procedure in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

An older court decision blocked enforcing the 1864 law shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a constitutional right to an abortion. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, then state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, persuaded a state judge in Tucson to lift the block on enforcing the 1864 law. Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, had urged the state’s high court to side with the Court of Appeals and hold the 1864 law in abeyance. “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,” Mayes said Tuesday.