The Arizona Supreme Court delayed the reinforcement of an 1864 near-total abortion ban after Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) signed a repeal of the ban earlier this month.
The ruling allows Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, to appeal the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I continue to believe this case was wrongly decided, and there are issues that merit additional judicial review,” Mayes said in a statement. “I will do everything I can to ensure that doctors can provide medical care for their patients according to their best judgment, not the beliefs of the men elected to the territorial legislature 160 years ago.”
Mayes’s office had asked for the delay in order to figure out its next course of action with the appeal. The attorney general said the 90-day stay will allow her office to “consider the best legal course of action to take from here, including a potential petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
While the state legislature repealed the Civil War-era abortion ban, there was still going to be a period of time this summer when abortion would be banned because Arizona law requires that new bills signed into law not go into effect until 90 days after the legislature adjourns.
The ruling cleared up confusion about a timeline as it states that the ban cannot go into effect until Aug. 12, which was the time when the legislation was set to go into effect.
The abortion ban will likely not go into effect in Arizona, although that depends on when the Arizona legislature adjourns for the session.
The repeal signed into law this month reverted the state back to a 2022 abortion law, which bans abortions after 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest.
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An abortion referendum will still be on the ballot for Arizona voters this November, which would create a “fundamental right to abortion” in the state constitution. The coalition that is spearheading the referendum, Arizona for Abortion Access, said it gathered enough signatures for abortion to be on the ballot statewide.
“With this order, Arizonans are still subjected to another extreme ban, one that punishes patients experiencing pregnancy complications and survivors of rape and incest,” Arizona for Abortion Access spokeswoman Chris Love said of the 2022 law.
