By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) – Arizona’s high court docket revived a legislation courting to 1864 on Tuesday that bans abortion in digital all cases, one other setback for reproductive rights in a state the place the process already was barred beginning at 15 weeks of being pregnant.
The Arizona Supreme Court docket, whose seven justices all had been appointed by Republican governors, dominated in favor of an anti-abortion obstetrician and a county prosecutor who took up protection of the legislation after the state’s Democratic legal professional normal had declined to so. The legislation, enacted even earlier than Arizona turned a U.S. state, banned abortions besides to avoid wasting the girl’s life and imposed a penalty of as much as 5 years in jail for anybody who performs an abortion.
Deliberate Parenthood, which supplies abortions and different healthcare providers, sued the state in 1971 to problem the nineteenth century legislation. A choose dominated in Deliberate Parenthood’s favor and issued an order blocking the legislation following the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade that acknowledged a constitutional proper to abortion and legalized the process nationwide.
In March 2022, the governor on the time, Republican Doug Ducey, signed the brand new legislation that banned abortion after 15 weeks. Just like the 1864 statute, it carries a penalty of as much as 5 years in jail for anybody who performs or helps a girl acquire an abortion.
The U.S. Supreme Court docket cleared the way in which for the brand new legislation to take impact when it overturned Roe in June 2022. Plenty of states since have enacted Republican-backed abortion restrictions.
In July 2022, the Republican Legal professional Basic Mark Brnovich filed a movement within the Deliberate Parenthood case to problem the judicial order that blocked the 1864 legislation and let prosecutors implement the ban. A court docket granted that request in September 2022.
After Deliberate Parenthood appealed, a state appellate court docket in December 2022 as soon as once more blocked the 1864 ban from being enforced towards docs, although it allowed enforcement towards non-physicians who carry out abortions. The state’s newly elected Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, and legal professional normal, Kris Mayes, declined to enchantment additional.
That led obstetrician Eric Hazelrigg and Yavapai County Legal professional Dennis McGrane to intervene within the case to defend the 1864 legislation earlier than the state’s Supreme Court docket. Hazelrigg runs a community of disaster being pregnant facilities – services the place pregnant girls are recommended towards from having abortions.
They’re represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative authorized group behind different challenges to abortion rights together with an effort to limit entry to the abortion capsule.
A gaggle of abortion rights organizations referred to as Arizona for Abortion Entry final week mentioned it had gathered sufficient signatures to place earlier than voters in November a poll measure that might enshrine within the state’s structure a proper to an abortion till fetal viability, which is round week 24 of being pregnant.