The near-total abortion ban in Arizona has ended as Gov. Katie Hobbs’s recently signed law took effect on Sept. 14.
While signing the law, Hobbs denounced the previous regulation, describing it as “a ban that was passed by 27 men before Arizona was even a state, at a time when America was at war over the right to own slaves, a time before women could even vote.”
“This ban needs to be repealed; I said it in 2022 when Roe was overturned, and I said it again and again as governor,” Hobbs said.
Under the new legal framework, abortion in Arizona is legal with certain restrictions, allowing women access to abortion and providing legal clarity for medical providers.
After a nearly two-year battle over state abortion law, Arizona’s Supreme Court voted in early April to reinstate the 1864 law, which permitted abortions only if the mother’s life was in danger and did not make any exceptions for rape or incest.
The 4–2 judgment from the state Supreme Court overturned an appeals court decision that a 15-week abortion limit enacted in 2022 superseded the abortion restrictions of the older law.
The Arizona Court of Appeals had determined that the two statutes could be “harmonized,” thereby enabling doctors to perform abortions at up to 15 weeks and allowing for the prosecution of non-physicians who perform abortions in the state.
The June 2022 Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has caused controversy in numerous states, including Arizona. The state’s attorney general at the time, Mark Brnovich, said the state was legally obligated to enforce the 1864 law.
A 1973 injunction, handed down in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, effectively prohibited the statute at the time.
Planned Parenthood of Arizona’s lawyers countered Brnovich’s motion to lift the injunction by claiming that Arizona’s newer abortion laws, such as the 15-week limit, show that lawmakers intended to allow more abortion access than the law from the Civil War era allows.
Despite being in the minority in the Legislature, Democrats rallied a number of Republicans to swiftly move a repeal bill to Hobbs’s desk in just a few weeks.
The law takes effect as voters indicate that abortion is a critical issue in the upcoming presidential election. An Aug. 13 poll, conducted by The Economist/YouGov, found that three out of four voters consider it vital or very important.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat nominee, has long advocated a return to the Roe v. Wade-style federal right to abortion and maintains that women have an inherent right to abortion.
