Arizona Judge Rules That Abortion Ban From 1901 Can Take Effect
The ban, which was made law more than a decade before Arizona even became a U.S. state, could put abortion providers in prison for up to five years.
AbortionPolitics
Arizona can officially enforce a near-total abortion ban that existed more than a decade before it would join the United States as its 48th member. On Friday, a state court judge in a Southern Arizona county lifted an injunction, allowing a 1901 abortion ban to go into effect while failing to clarify how this change will interact with dozens of anti-abortion laws already on the books.
A version of this law was first passed in the territorial legislature back in 1864 but was amended in 1901. (Arizona joined the union in 1912.) When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the courts dropped local litigation surrounding the law because of the Supreme Court decision.
So, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June, the state’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked the court to return to the injunction that blocked the law from going into effect for nearly 50 years.
The law carries two to five years of prison time for anyone who “provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman.” The law’s only exception is a very narrow, very vague exception for life of the patient—literally stating, “unless it is necessary to save her life.” The ruling will likely be appealed.
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