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GLORIA REBECCA GOMEZ
Arizona Mirror
The Arizona Supreme Court has agreed to consider the petition of an anti-abortion doctor who argues that a near-total abortion ban from 1864 should be the law of the land.
In March, Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, medical director of a chain of anti-abortion clinics, filed an appeal with the state’s high court, urging the justices to overturn a December 2022 ruling that upheld the current 15-week limit and called on them to reinstate a near-total ban on the procedure. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case and set a briefing schedule that stretches into October.
A look back at the history
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the constitutional right to an abortion last year set off months of turmoil and uncertainty in Arizona, as Republican state leaders went to court to revive a near-total ban from the state’s territorial days that had been blocked in 1971.
The 1864 law that former Attorney General Mark Brnovich hoped to enforce bars doctors from performing abortions in all cases except when the patient’s life is in danger, and carries with it a mandatory 2- to 5-year prison sentence. At the same time, a law that had passed just a month before the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization restricted abortions past 15 weeks.
Planned Parenthood Arizona, which runs four of the state’s nine abortion clinics, pushed back on attempts to implement the 1864 ban. Brnovich argued that a provision in the 15-week law which said it didn’t repeal any other laws passed before it allowed the 1864 ban to go back into effect. But attorneys for Planned Parenthood Arizona rebutted that Brnovich’s logic means that every other abortion restriction isn’t repealed, either, implying that some access to the procedure should remain.
A three-judge appellate panel sided with abortion advocates in December, ruling that the 15-week law should supersede the 1864 law.The judges sought to harmonize the two conflicting statutes and avoid erasing nearly 50 years of lawmaking by deciding that the 1864 ban only applies to non-physicians.
