Array
A judge in Arizona ruled that the state’s 19th-century abortion ban could take effect.
In a ruling Thursday, Arizona Superior Court judge Kellie Johnson ruled that Arizona’s near-total abortion ban, which dates back to 1864, could take effect after the Supreme Court sent the issue of abortion back to the states in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The judge’s ruling overturned a state court decision in 1973 that blocked the law after Roe v. Wade took effect.
The 1864 law, which was modified with streamlined language in 1901, bans the administration of an abortion procedure or abortifacient drug. “A person 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, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years,” the law states.
Recounting the legal history behind the case, Johnson wrote that the law was declared unconstitutional at trial in 1972, but that decision was overturned by an appeals court in 1973.
