Arizona can enforce a near-total ban on abortion that has been blocked for nearly 50 years, a judge ruled Friday, meaning clinics across the state will have to stop performing the procedures to avoid criminal charges being brought against them. doctors and other medical workers.
The judge lifted a decades-old injunction that had prevented enforcement of the law that was enacted before Arizona became a state and bans nearly all abortions. The only exception allowed is when the woman’s life is in danger.
The ruling means that people who want an abortion will have to go to another state to get it. It is almost certain that the ruling will be appealed.
Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson’s decision came more than a month after hearing arguments about Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s request to overturn the injunction.
This had been in effect since shortly after the 1973 US Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, who held that women had a constitutional right to abortion.
The near total ban on abortion was enacted decades before Arizona received statehood in 1912.
The prosecutions stopped after an injunction was issued following the Roe v. Wade. However, the legislature re-enacted the law several times, most recently in 1977.
Deputy Attorney General Beau Roysden told Johnson at a hearing on August 19 that since the Roe v. Wade had been revoked, the sole reason for the injunction blocking the old law was gone and it should allow it to be enforced.
Under that law, anyone who performs a surgical abortion or supplies abortion drugs can be sent to prison for two to five years.
An attorney for Planned Parenthood and its Arizona affiliate argued that allowing the state’s pre-establishment ban to apply would render meaningless a series of more recent laws regulating abortion.
Instead, he urged the judge to let licensed doctors perform abortions and that the old ban only apply to those without a license.
The judge ruled in favor of Brnovich, stating that since the injunction was filed in 1973 solely because of the Roe v. Wade, it must be lifted in its entirety.