Arizonans’ two-year fight over a near-total abortion ban will come to a close shortly with the law’s impending repeal. However, the larger battle over abortion in the state is just beginning, Gov. Katie Hobbs said.
“Arizona women should not have to live in a state where politicians make decisions that should be between a woman and her doctor. While this repeal is essential for protecting women’s lives, it is just the beginning of our fight to protect reproductive healthcare,” Ms. Hobbs said on May 1 after a divided Arizona Senate passed the repeal in a 16–14 vote.
The governor, a Democrat, signed the repeal on May 2, but it won’t take effect until 90 days after the state’s Legislature adjourns in June or July. In the meantime, the ban on all abortions except those performed in medical emergencies is slated to become enforceable on June 27.
The vote to repeal the law dragged on for hours as disappointed Republican senators rose to express their frustration.
“What we’re actually voting on is death,” Sen. Anthony Kern said, scolding the few members of the GOP who helped to pass the bill.
“The Democrat [sic] Party stands and runs on death. The Republican Party stands and is supposed to run on life.”
Proponents of the repeal, however, contended that the 1864 ban was outdated and inconsistent with the values of modern Arizonans.
“I don’t want us honoring laws about women written during a time when women were forbidden from voting because their voices were considered inferior to men,” Democrat Sen. Eva Burch said.
Once the repeal takes effect, the state’s prevailing abortion law will be a 15-week limit on the procedure, which abortion proponents have decried for its lack of exceptions for situations involving rape or incest. However, a ballot measure that appears destined for the state’s November ballot could erase that law as well.
The proposed amendment to the state’s constitution would establish a “fundamental right to abortion” until the point of fetal viability and in cases in which a treating “health care professional” deems it necessary to protect the mother’s physical or mental health. The amendment also leaves the determination of viability up to a treating health care professional and does not require that professional to be a doctor.
Organizers for the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign announced last month that they had collected more than enough signatures to secure a spot for the measure on the general election ballot.
Similar initiatives have been successful at the ballot box since the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022. However, as was the case with those measures, opponents of the Arizona amendment say it is deceptive and extreme.
“Voters deserve to know the truth: the abortion amendment takes away the required doctor and legalizes abortion for any reason beyond viability when the fetus can live outside the womb,” the It Goes Too Far opposition campaign wrote in an April 25 social media post.
The group argues that, under the proposed law, abortion providers—who would stand to profit—would need only to sign off on aborting a baby at nine months’ gestation for the procedure to be legal.
Opponents have also voiced concerns that the law would roll back safety standards and eliminate requirements for parental involvement in a minor’s decision to obtain an abortion.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in February that the initiative would “wipe out every single pro-life protection that Arizona has.”
“It’s part of the master plan that the pro-abortion left has to wipe out all pro-life laws in this country. Arizona is next,” she warned.
Nationally, Democrats have signaled their intention to make abortion a key issue in the upcoming elections. Among Republicans, however, the subject has become somewhat taboo.
While many in the GOP personally identify as pro-life, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, has urged fellow Republicans to follow his lead in taking a more hands-off approach.
Abortion, President Trump has said, is now a matter for the states to decide because of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.
“My view is now that we have abortion where everyone wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state,” he said on April 8.
“Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will be more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”
Zachary Stieber and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
