Arizona Republicans pulled some cockamamie procedural bullshit in the Legislature today and kept a Democratic repeal of the 1864 abortion law from being enacted. Republicans had the opportunity to return the state to something approaching sanity, to something approaching safety and equality for Arizona women, and they failed.
For the second time in as many weeks, Arizona Republicans refused to strike down a near-total abortion ban from 1864, using a procedural move to block a Democratic effort to repeal the law.
On April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a near-total ban from 1864, which includes no exceptions for rape or incest and punishes doctors who perform abortions for any reason other than saving a woman’s life with mandatory prison time, supersedes a 15-week gestational ban passed in 2022.
With a 31-29 Republican majority in the House, all 29 Democrats and one Republican voted to repeal the 1864 abortion ban, which was part of the bonkers crazy “Howell Code,” but the remaining Republican caucus voted in lock-step to retain the pre-statehood POS, so the vote deadlocked at 30-30.
If there was any doubt that an amendment to add abortion protections to the Arizona Constitution will be on the ballot in November, there’s absolutely no doubt now. Organizers have already collected more than a half million signatures, and after the Arizona Supreme Court and Republican Legislature sent women’s rights to the trash bin, abortion rights activists are now aiming for 800,000 signatures and will likely exceed even that, when they need fewer than 400,000 to add the referendum to the ballot. Thanks, Republicans!
GOP bozos may try to muddy the November ballot and confuse voters with their own abortion referenda. But they’d have to get a boatload of signatures for different propositions real fast, and they’re misjudging voters, who are tuned in, pissed off, and unlikely to be fooled by Republican shenanigans, which is all they have left, certainly not a concern for the health of Arizona women and girls. But their boneheaded majority ends soon.
“We will definitely flip the Legislature,” said Tucson Democrat Stahl Hamilton, who introduced the bill to repeal the 1864 law, which was derailed by Republican extremists like Jacqueline Parker of Mesa. Remember their names.