PHOENIX (AP) — Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has issued a ban on most Civil War-era people. abortion Look back on the past by signing the repeal bill into law on Thursday.
Mr. Hobbs said that the movement just the beginning The fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona. However, the repeal may not take effect until June or July, 90 days after Congress adjourns. Abortion rights advocates want the courts to intervene to block that outcome.
Efforts to repeal a long-dormant law that bans all abortions except those performed to save the patient's life. It won final legislative approval on Wednesday. It passed in the Senate on a 16-14 vote, with two Republicans joining Democrats.
Hobbs denounced Prohibition, “passed by 27 men before Arizona became a state, at a time when America was at war over the right to own slaves and women couldn't even vote.” did.
“This ban needs to be repealed. I said it when Roe was overturned in 2022, and I said it many times when I was governor,” Hobbs said.
Voting lasted several hours as senators explained their motivations in personal, emotional and even Biblical terms. It included graphic descriptions of abortion procedures, amplified audio recordings of fetal heartbeats, and warnings about the dangers of “legislating religious beliefs.”
At the same time Wednesday, supporters of South Dakota's abortion rights initiative made a major filing. More signatures than required Meanwhile, in Florida, a ban went into effect on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant.
AP correspondent Donna Warder reports on a Civil War-era abortion ban that's becoming history.
Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays, a Democrat who opposes a near-total abortion ban, said the dormant abortion ban would take effect at the earliest June 27, but asked the state Supreme Court to wait until late July. They requested a stay of execution. . But the anti-abortion group Defending Freedom, which defends the ban, says county prosecutors could begin enforcing it once the Supreme Court's ruling is finalized, which has not yet been decided.
The near-total ban also makes no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest. In a decision last month, the Arizona Supreme Court suggested: Doctors may be prosecuted The law, first approved in 1864, provided for a prison sentence of two to five years for anyone who facilitated an abortion.
The repeal means a 2022 law banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy will become the general abortion law in Arizona.
A large number of legislators, most of them women, joined the governor at the signing ceremony. Some were emotional, cheering repeal and saying more needs to be done to protect reproductive health care rights.
Former Democratic state Rep. Athena Salman celebrated the approval of the repeal, which she originally proposed in 2019.
Salman, who resigned as head of the abortion rights group in January, said he couldn't stop thinking about his daughters. “Future generations will not have to live with the restrictions and disturbances that we have had to experience,” she said.
Arizona Congresswoman Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, a Democratic lawmaker who is a key figure in the fight to overturn the territory's abortion ban, spent her childhood in the Navajo Nation, where her parents were school teachers, and where people learned about reproductive issues. He said he has seen firsthand how people are denied their rights.
She also watched as her sister-in-law suffered through two difficult pregnancies that resulted in stillbirths.
“My 17-year-old daughter will have less reproductive freedom if this law goes into effect than my great-grandmother, who had to have an abortion in 1940, and the state of Texas,” Stahl-Hamilton said. . “There are people who need reproductive health care right now.”
President Joe Biden's campaign believes that while the issue has divided Republican leaders, anger over the Roe v. Wade loss will give them political advantage in battleground states like Arizona.
On Wednesday, anti-abortion supporters in the Senate jeered and blocked Republican state Sen. Shauna Bolick from explaining that she joined Democrats in voting in favor of repeal. Bolick is married to state Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, who voted in April to reinstate the 1864 abortion law. He will face a Remain election in November.
The 19th-century law had been blocked since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion across the country.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, convinced a state judge that the 1864 ban was invalid. may be forced. Still, while this case is making its way through the courts, the law has not actually been implemented.
Planned Parenthood of Arizona filed a motion Wednesday afternoon asking the state Supreme Court to block the suspension of abortion services until the Legislature's repeal takes effect.
Advocates argue that abortion should not be performed until the fetus is viable outside the womb (usually about 24 weeks), with exceptions, to save the parent's life or protect the parent's physical or mental health. We're gathering signatures for a ballot measure to approve it.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are considering putting one or more competing abortion proposals on the November ballot.
Dr. Ronald Younis, a Phoenix-based obstetrician-gynecologist who also performs abortions, said the repeal is a positive development for patients who may leave Arizona for medical care.
“This is good so that women don't have to travel to other states just to get the medical care they need,” Younis said. “I have a lot of confidence in the governor and attorney general, so I wasn't too worried. I'm confident they will continue to look for ways to protect women.”