Having remained dormant for decades, a very restrictive law on abortion will finally be repealed in the American state of Arizona, after almost being reactivated. By 16 votes for and 14 against, the Senate of this western American state voted, Wednesday, May 1, to repeal this text dating from 1864, which prohibits any voluntary termination of pregnancy from the moment of conception, except if the mother’s life is in danger, neither rape nor incest being considered valid exceptions.
On April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court sparked considerable controversy in the country by ruling that this law was “now applicable.” The decision took note of the reversal of jurisprudence by the Supreme Court of the United States, which in June 2022 withdrew the federal guarantee of the right to abortion by overturning the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.
Since this decision giving states full latitude to legislate in this area, around twenty have banned or severely restricted access to abortion. As for the ruling of the Arizona Supreme Court, it was condemned by Joe Biden but also criticized in a more moderate manner by Donald Trump.
“This total ban on abortion would have put doctors in prison, threatened the lives of women across our state, and taken away the right of millions of Arizonans” to decide about their bodies, the Democratic governor of the state said on Wednesday. Arizona, Katie Hobbs, who said she was “pleased” in a statement about this vote in the upper house of the State Legislature, saying she “looks forward to enacting this repeal.”
A major subject of the presidential campaign
Arizona Attorney General, Democrat Kris Mayes, had long warned that she would not pursue any prosecution. A decision which could have changed according to the elections, the attorneys general being elected in the United States. The decision “to reimpose a law dating from a time when Arizona was not a state, when the Civil War raged and women could not even vote, will go down in history as a stain on our state », she lamented on April 9.
The right to abortion has emerged as a major issue in the presidential campaign in the United States. Arizona is one of the pivotal states that could decide the final outcome. The promoters of a popular initiative announced in April that they had collected the necessary signatures to obtain a referendum to include abortion in the Arizona Constitution. This vote should take place at the same time as the presidential election in November, as will for example be the case in Florida, another decisive state.
Outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden is making the defense of women’s rights a major focus of his campaign for a second term, facing his Republican opponent Donald Trump. The latter prides himself on having, through his appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States, resulted in the cancellation of federal protection for abortion in June 2022, but insists on the electoral risks of an overly conservative position on the question.
