Arizona ruling highlights abortion struggle within GOP
WASHINGTON — A day after former President Donald Trump backed away from supporting a national abortion ban, an Arizona Supreme Court ruling criminalizing abortion in the state highlighted a growing GOP divide on the issue, with a trio of prominent Arizona Republicans blasting the decision.
Senate candidate Kari Lake, a Trump ally who defended Trump’s false claims he won the 2020 election, and U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, a rising star in the House Republican Conference, criticized the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday enforcing an 1864 law eliminating all abortions in the state except in the case of saving the life of the pregnant person. U.S. Rep. David Schweikert, too, weighed in against the decision.
Ciscomani, who called the ruling “a disaster,” defended a previous state law banning abortion after 15 weeks, saying “it respected women and the difficult decision of ending a pregnancy — one I will never personally experience and won’t pretend to understand.”
“As my record shows, I’m a strong supporter of empowering women to make their own health care choices, and I oppose a national abortion ban,” he said.
Ciscomani won his seat in 2022 by 1.5 percentage points in a district that President Joe Biden would have won in 2020 by 1.5 percentage points. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the 2024 race as Tilt Republican.
His Democratic opponent in this year’s elections, Kirsten Engel, vowed to restore Roe v. Wade and criticized Ciscomani as having “voted again and again to restrict abortion access.”
Lake, meanwhile, called on Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, and the Arizona Legislature to come up with an “immediate
commonsense solution Arizonans can support.”
“I am not going to D.C. to legislate an issue that has been returned to the states,” said Lake, who lost the governor’s race to Hobbs in 2022.
Lake’s statement, in particular, echoed Trump, who on Monday backed away from a national abortion ban, saying the issue should be left to states. Trump’s comments outraged anti-abortion groups such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America and March for Life.
Restricting abortion access is unpopular among voters — every state ballot initiative on abortion in the wake of the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that overturned the right to an abortion has gone toward increased abortion access or against further restrictions.
In the 4-2 ruling Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court said the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization makes the 1864 law enforceable, but it also issued a 14-day stay against enforcement while a lower court considers “additional constitutional challenges” that have not been resolved.
The 160-year-old law, which predates Arizona’s existence as a U.S. state and women’s right to vote in the United States, makes abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs an abortion or helps a woman obtain the procedure. Before the ruling, Arizona law allowed for abortions up to 15 weeks. But the Civil War-era law was revived in September 2022 by an Arizona judge, launching a lengthy legal battle.
Still, abortion access in Arizona could be left to voters in the state this year. The reproductive rights group Arizona for Abortion Access has been collecting signatures to meet a July deadline to put a measure on the November ballot protecting access to the procedure. Earlier this month, the group said it had far exceeded the required number of signatures to get the measure on the ballot.
Arizona is considered a swing state, with Biden winning it by just 0.3 percentage points in 2020.
In a statement, the White House called the Arizona ruling a “result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom.”
“Arizona just rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote — and, by his own admission, there’s one person responsible: Donald Trump,” Vice President Kamala Harris said.
“The girls today and the young women do not have the rights that we once did because of Donald Trump,” chimed in Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat. “Donald Trump is dangerous and reckless.”
Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who was elected by just 280 votes in 2022, attributed her victory to backlash over the Dobbs decision. She said Tuesday’s ruling would again spur independents and Republicans who support abortion rights to vote for Democrats.
“If past is prologue, this is going to have a deep and lasting impact on politics in Arizona,” Mayes said.
Schweikert, who has an A+ rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America, said the issue of abortion should be decided by voters, “not legislated from the bench.” Like Lake and Ciscomani, he called on the state legislature to take action.
His district, which he won in 2022 by 0.8 percentage points, is also Tilt Republican, according to Inside Elections. Biden won that district by 1.1 percentage points in 2020.
The Democrats seeking to unseat Schweikert in November were quick to weigh in.
Conor O’callaghan called the ruling an outrage and said his campaign was distributing Arizona for Abortion Access petitions. Marlene Galán-woods, who has been endorsed by Emily’s List, said she was “horrified and infuriated by today’s draconian decision to ban nearly all access to abortion.”
Several other states will have abortion petitions on the ballot this November, including Florida and Maryland; residents in states including Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota are working to secure enough signatures for a ballot initiative.