An older court decision blocked enforcing the 1864 law shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a constitutional right to an abortion. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, then state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, persuaded a state judge in Tucson to lift the block on enforcing the 1864 law.
Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, had urged the state’s high court to side with the Court of Appeals and hold the 1864 law in abeyance.
“Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state,” Mayes said Tuesday..and MORE