by Gloria Rebecca Gomez, Arizona Mirror
After two weeks of thwarted attempts, the Arizona House of Representatives voted Wednesday to repeal a near-total abortion ban from 1864, with three Republican lawmakers breaking from their party to join Democrats in striking it down.
Earlier this month, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the 1864 law, which carries with it a mandatory prison sentence for doctors who provide an abortion for any reason other than saving a woman’s life, over a 15-week gestational ban passed in 2022.
The ruling sent shockwaves through Arizona’s political landscape, and several attempts to repeal the 160-year-old law in the state legislature on April 10 and April 17 were blocked by the GOP majority. At the time, only Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, who’s facing reelection in a swing district that has a history of punishing anti-abortion politicians, supported Democrats in their bid to eliminate the law before it’s set to go into effect on June 8.
But those initial pushes to strike the near-total ban from the books fell short by just one vote in a chamber controlled by Republicans. The stumbling block was a procedural motion to force a vote on the bill, which failed repeatedly because Gress was the only GOP lawmaker who voted to bring the repeal legislation to the floor.
That changed on Wednesday, when Republican Rep. Tim Dunn, R-Yuma, joined Gress in bucking House Speaker Ben Toma and the rest of the GOP caucus, allowing the vote to occur. Dunn and Gress then voted for to approve House Bill 2677, as did Rep. Justin Wilmeth, R-Phoenix.
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