"Yesterday, former president Trump released a video celebrating state control over abortion; today, a judicial decision in Arizona illuminated just what such state control means. With the federal recognition of the constitutional right to abortion gone since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, old laws left on state books once again are becoming the law of the land."
"The Arizona law that will begin to be enforced in 14 days was written by a single man in 1864.
In 1864, Arizona was not a state, women and minorities could not vote, and doctors were still sewing up wounds with horsehair and storing their unwashed medical instruments in velvet-lined cases."
"So, in 1864, a legislature of 27 white men created a body of laws that discriminated against Black people and people of color and considered girls as young as ten able to consent to sex, and they adopted a body of criminal laws written by one single man.
And in 2024, one of those laws is back in force in Arizona.
"This is Dobbs in action, which leaves it up to each state to decide whether women have abortion rights and, if so, to what extent. Your gerrymandered state legislature is now in charge of your healthcare and the lives of people you love.
Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled today that its 1864 total abortion ban, a law written more than 50 years before women were granted the right to vote, is good law again."
"The Arizona Supreme Court decision today demonstrates what Trump’s view means in action. Trump’s campaign confirmed that he supported Arizona’s ruling today, 'President Trump could not have been more clear. These are decisions for people of each state to make.'"
"It’s all Trump’s doing. In 2016, during a debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump pledged to remake the U.S. Supreme Court with nominees who were against abortion. 'The justices that I am going to appoint will be pro-life,' he promised. Later in that debate, Trump predicted his nominees would help deliver the end of Roe v. Wade."
"On Monday, Trump said states are free to deprive women of reproductive liberty. On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court accepted Trump's invitation and abolished the right of women in Arizona to obtain abortion healthcare at any stage of pregnancy."
"Project 2025 is the MAGA minimum and you don’t need an imagination to see what that nightmare will look like. It’s already happening in the south. And soon it will be real in Arizona, thanks to Donald Trump.
No one on the right is confused about this. Yet somehow, the press still manages to be."
"Barely 24 hours after Roe-destroying Donald Trump took the craven and elastic position that he would leave abortion policy to the individual states, Arizona’s Supreme Court showed exactly what that will look like."
Charles Pierce notes that the Arizona Supremes just sent women back to 1864, then adds,
"You may recall that the Wisconsin supreme court threw out an attempt to breathe life back into that state’s ancient prohibition. The decision came when an election handed the Democrats a majority on the bench. These two things are not coincidental."
"The Arizona Supreme Court just upended Trump’s gambit on abortion
On Monday, Trump declined to support a national abortion ban, seeking to neutralize the political issue. A day later, Arizona’s ban gave it new life."
"Trump is the man most responsible for ending Roe v. Wade.
In fact, he boasts about it.
It’s too late now for Trump to backtrack and wash his hands of what he has done. Voters will remember, and they will be reminded repeatedly of it between now and the election."
"At a political level, it remains astonishing that Republican leaders continue to back six week bans or the things like the imposition of territorial law in Arizona. In Florida support for the six week ban is 22%. I assume support of the territorial law in Arizona is even lower. No American political party in modern times has advanced such unpopular issues that are so important to voters."
"It is a confirmation of how extremism and extremists have overtaken the GOP - imposing such unpopular things on voters and expecting them to roll over is far more authoritarian than something that would happen in a healthy democracy. But they keep doing it, again and again, in state after state, imposing their deeply unpopular and dangerous extremist agenda on all of us…."
"I think what’s become abundantly clear, both at the federal level and at the state level now in Arizona, is that the central strategy of the anti-abortion movement is to roll back the clock to the Victorian era, because they know that they cannot win through the democratic process, because abortion rights are popular."
"So, this is a law that is coming back into force in Arizona that dates back to a time before women could vote, that dates back to a time before slavery was ended, when Black women in large swaths of the country were still considered chattel. This dates back to an era where we had widespread regulation not just of abortion, but of anything that was considered vice or, you know, immoral."
"If it can happen in Arizona, it can happen at the federal level if the Comstock Act comes back into force. And we saw recently in arguments before the Supreme Court that at least two justices on the Supreme Court seemed very eager to bring the Comstock Act back into effect and roll this entire country back to the Victorian era."
"Today in Atlanta a reporter asked Trump whether he would sign a national abortion ban if Congress sent one to him as President. He said he would not. A clear 'no.' He got asked again, and again said no. It should go without saying that there’s zero reason to believe him. If Congress passed such a law he would almost certainly sign it. But that’s not what’s interesting here."
"He very conspicuously did not say this in his abortion mini-speech on Monday. It’s not like he didn’t know that was an option. He and his campaign very strategically did not say this. Now he has. It is a very clear sign of just how much Trump and his campaign feel like they’re on the run and on the ropes on this issue, partly because the Monday announcement was generally ineffective and even more after the bombshell news yesterday out of Arizona."
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