US: Arizona Court Revives 1864 Law Banning Nearly All Abortions

The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated a law from 1864 banning nearly all abortions, reported news agency Reuters. In a 4-2 judgment, the court ruled in favour of an anti-abortion obstetrician and county prosecutor who pressed to implement the Civil War-ear statute after the Democratic attorney general of the key presidential battleground state declined to do so. 

The 1864 law, which is older than Arizona becoming a state, makes abortion punishable by two to five years in prison, except when the mother’s life is at risk. 

The judgment came after months of legal wrangling about whether the pre-statehood legislation could be enforced after years of dormancy. 

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According to a BBC report, many argued that the decades of state legislation effectively nullified the 1864 law, including a 2022 law that allowed to terminate pregnancy until 15 weeks. 

The Arizona top court agreed to review the case in August 2023 after a right-wing law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, moved the state apex court challenging a lower court ruling that said that the more recent law should stand. 

The top court said that the 1864 law was “now enforceable” because there were no federal or state protections for the procedure.

The state high court ruled that the 160-year-old law could be enforced prospectively but stayed the implementation of its decision for 14 days to allow the parties to raise any remaining issues at the trial-court level. 

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Arizona Justice John Lopez, who was appointed by a Republican governor like all the state supreme court judges, wrote that the state’s legislature “has never affirmatively created a right to, or independently authorised, elective abortion.”

“We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgment, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens,” Lopez wrote, as per the Reuters report. 

The state high court ruled that the 160-year-old law could be enforced prospectively but stayed the implementation of its decision for 14 days to allow the parties to raise any remaining issues at the trial-court level.