The Arizona Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday over whether the state should follow an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions or if doctors should be allowed to perform abortions in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy under a law passed last year.
The state’s high court is reviewing the Arizona Court of Appeals ruling that said doctors can’t be prosecuted for performing abortions in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy on the grounds that other Arizona laws over the years have allowed them to perform the procedure.
Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, a practicing OB-GYN, is the medical director of Choices, a network of pregnancy resource centers in the Greater Phoenix area. Dr. Hazelrigg filed a petition with the Arizona Supreme Court to overturn the ruling that doctors could perform abortions.
The 1864 law, which remains on the books, imposes a near total ban on abortions, providing no exceptions for rape or incest but allowing abortion if a mother’s life is in danger.
Attorneys representing Dr. Hazelrigg had argued that the Court of Appeals incorrectly concluded that the law doesn’t apply to doctors. They wanted the Arizona Supreme Court to lift the lower court’s injunction.
Arizona Law
The outright ban was initially enacted in the 1860s during the Civil War period, before Arizona was an official state. It was in effect until 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion nationwide. The same year, an injunction was placed on the state’s total abortion ban.
He said that “additional information related to the parties and respective counsel has come to my attention warranting that I recuse myself from any further deliberations in this matter.”
This past summer, pro-abortion activists began a push to ask Arizona voters to create a constitutional right to abortion. If proponents collect enough signatures, Arizona will become the latest state to put the question of abortion laws directly to voters.
According to data from the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research organization, Arizona has 1.6 million women in the reproductive age range of 15 to 49 years old. The state saw 13,320 abortions in 2020, with the abortion rate among 15- to 44-year-olds being 9.3 per 1,000 women.
