The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a near-total abortion ban in a 4-2 ruling Tuesday morning shook residents across the state, immediately spurring public outcry and protests.
The 1864 law makes abortions illegal except in the case of a life-or-death situation, a stark change from Arizona’s current statute that allows abortions up to 15 weeks.
The newly approved policy won’t go into effect until at least 60 days, after which people who aid abortions face criminal penalties of 2-5 years in prison.
The 60-day timeline comes from the 45-day delay due to the October 2022 agreement by then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, not to enforce the 1864 Civil-War era law until 45 days after the case was resolved plus the 15 days it takes for an appellate court to issue a mandate.
While some pregnant people may still access abortion services outside of Arizona, perhaps in México, those with economic or other limitations will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.
About 11,400 people received an abortion in Arizona in 2022, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services 2022 Abortion Report data.
From 2021 to 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion, the number of Arizona resident abortions dropped 18% — the steepest decrease in at least a decade. About half of Arizona abortions were done via medication and half via surgical procedure.
With the near-total ban returning soon, doctors, patients and abortion advocates are preparing to navigate a new reproductive health landscape — one not seen in decades.
Arizona Luminaria spoke to people across the state about the court’s decision and their concerns:
Ali Erdmann said she felt a gut punch with the state Supreme Court’s decision to ban abortion on Tuesday. As someone who experienced complications with an ectopic pregnancy, Erdmann was especially passionate rallying outside City Hall.
“Not only that, just as a human being it feels so personal and a personal attack on our rights and our bodies,” she said.
Although she said she is outraged and surprised, Erdmann is still encouraged to mobilize and is inspired by other states’ protections on abortion rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
“Blood will be on [the state Supreme Court justices’] hands because of this decision,” Erdmann said. “Forcing people to carry babies to term that aren’t even viable, forcing minors into pregnancy is unconscionable.”
April Ignacio, a co-founder of Indivisible Tohono, said she was listening to the news with a coworker on Tuesday when the story broke about the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling that banned abortion. She said it was emotional and embarrassing but also not surprising “because what happens in Florida happens in Texas, and what happens in Texas happens in Arizona.”
“It’s heartbreaking and devastating because we live in a rural area that already has very limited healthcare facilities, opportunities and resources,” she said.
Ignacio is a citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation and lives in Sells, its capital. She is also a Democratic candidate for Pima County Board of Supervisors District 3.
“This (state) is my home, we were here before anyone but Arizona knows how to make me cry,” Ignacio said.
For Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, who is also a citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation, Tuesday’s abortion ruling was angering. She said she married her high school sweetheart and they have twins who are young adults. Now, at the age of 41, she said she has no intention of becoming a new parent all over again.
“The primary function of my birth control is for my health, the secondary is a birth control prevention for getting pregnant. My backup to my plan is an abortion,” she said. “I do not plan on having a change of life baby with 23 years between my children and another set of twins, and I have to think in multiples, right?”
“I’m pissed off that I have to talk about all of that and that it’s in the hands of lawmakers and not medical professionals,” she continued.
“I think there’s a lot of focus on these concepts of like, well, what about rape? What about incest? Well, what if somebody simply doesn’t want to have a child? I don’t want to have any more children and this is not up for debate,” Cázares-Kelly said. “Having to have all these additional justifications is irrelevant. If I don’t want to have a child, I don’t want to have a baby, an embryo, in my body, that should be a conversation between me and my medical provider. None of that other stuff should even come into play.”
Cázares-Kelly, who also serves as Pima County’s recorder and is up for reelection, also noted that the pre-statehood law was enacted during a time when people were still enslaved and communities of color and women couldn’t vote.
“Hygiene practices hadn’t been fully adopted, people didn’t fully believe in washing their hands when they passed this law about what women can do with their bodies and what people with uteruses can do with their bodies,” she said.
Both women separately referenced a recent trauma Indigenous women faced when in the 1970s the Indian Health Services forced sterilizations on thousands of Native women, often without their full understanding or consent. Tuesday’s ruling only retraumatizes Indigenous women in particular by again stripping them of their right to choose and control what happens to their bodies, Ignacio and Cázares-Kelly explained.
“We’ve seen this before and it’s about controlling people, and controlling poor people,” Cázares-Kelly said. “Any rich woman with means is going to be able to travel to get an abortion, to get the medical care that she needs, the healthcare that she needs, but who this is really impacting is women who are marginalized.”
Both women also expressed support for a ballot measure known as the Arizona for Abortion Access initiative that could change the state constitution to add a fundamental right to abortion.
“What I find comfort in is all the women who I’ve had conversations with about it (Tuesday’s ruling) are ready to fight,” Ignacio said. “As big of a blow as it is to us, it’s going to be on the ballot for Arizona to protect women’s healthcare and the voters get to be a part of that process in November, that’s what it comes down to for women to have her bodily autonomy.”
Miranda Lopez, 29, came to downtown Tucson to stand up for abortion rights Tuesday evening. She said she kept on refreshing Google this morning, expecting the Arizona Supreme Court’s abortion decision. Her immediate reactions were “dismay, disappointment, fear and anger.”
She said, “Today it felt worse than in 2022” when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was first announced. “It’s ridiculous, it’s antiquated. This is the second time I’ve had less rights today than I did yesterday.”
“I’m still holding out hope,” she added. “Maybe we’ll be able to get something on the ballot.”
Abortion on the ballot
Groups are gathering signatures to put questions about abortion access to voters this year.
• The Arizona Abortion Access initiative would add a fundamental right to abortion to the Arizona Constitution. Read the full text.
To get on the ballot, Arizona for Abortion Access needs at least 383,923 valid signatures by the July 4 deadline. The group has been collecting signatures since September and said earlier this month that it has more than 500,000 signatures collected so far. Get information about signing the petition.
• The It Goes Too Far campaign is the main group opposing this ballot initiative. Learn more.
Josh Laughlin, 33, came to city hall with his partner Courtney Benke, 34, to support abortion rights.
“My partner and I aren’t interested in having kids,” Laughlin said. “We woke up and we were devastated,” he said.
The couple uses contraceptives, but they want access to reproductive rights as a backstop, he said. “We’re constantly thinking about moving back to England.” He added that his partner doesn’t feel comfortable in Arizona, making it “a hard place to want to live.”
Benke expressed her disbelief that a law has resurfaced from an age before women could vote and before penicillin was administered.
“It takes into no consideration the medical necessity of abortion and the needs that women have. It should just be the decision of a woman — between her and her doctor and her family,” she said.
Benke said she knows many women who have struggled in the last year to access the medical care needed for pregnancy in “a tricky situation.”
In 2018, Riley O’Neill, 26, said she was studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina when citizens were protesting for their abortion rights. She participated as an American in those protests and felt thankful that she was in a country where she did not have to fight for that right herself.
“It was definitely something I had taken for granted for a long time: that we had access to reproductive rights over our bodies as people with uteruses,” she said. “It’s just not the case anymore.”
O’Neill said she will continue to advocate for all-inclusive abortion care through medical providers and not just in extreme circumstances.
“It doesn’t work to have these arbitrary regulations. People are dying,” she said.
O’Neill is from Georgia and has lived in Tucson for four years. She said that in Georgia and Arizona alike, extreme laws on abortion are not as politically divided as people may think. Whether they are Republican or Democrat, she said, the majority of people support access to safe abortions.
“My friends are scared in Georgia and living here, I feel terrified too,” O’Neill said.
Lupita Hernández works as an office assistant at the Pimeria Alta Historical Society Museum in Nogales, Arizona. She was born, raised, and said she plans to die in her city.
“My opinion is that it’s not right to kill a human being, but if I had been raped I wouldn’t want a baby from someone who harmed me,” Hernández said. But outside of the exception for rapes or for the health and safety of the mother, she is against abortion.
Now that abortions won’t be accessible even for those situations, Hernández said, “I guess I would go to México and do it. I don’t want a baby from someone who did that to me.”
High schoolers Annabel Close, Sarah Addagada and Tanish Doshi joined Tuesday’s protest with the idea that “all social issues are interconnected.”
“The same people who are willing to strip reproductive rights from women are the same people who are willing to deny climate change and people who don’t believe in vaccines,” Doshi said.
Close, a local climate activist who often works alongside Doshi, said a comparison she heard once helped her solidify her stance on abortion rights issues: “If you are the only person that could save someone else with a blood donation, you are not forced to give that blood donation. So why should you be forced to give your body for a potential baby?”
Addagada said that since Roe was overturned in 2022, men have told her not to worry about abortion rights.
“‘Amy Coney Barrett is a woman, it’s not going to be that big of a deal.’ ‘If it’s just the state, it’s going to be that big of a deal,’” they told her.
But Addagada said all the anxieties she had since then have come true.
Many of the headlines Addagada read on Tuesday morning included that rape and incest were not exceptions for the abortion ban. She said this stuck out to her because it’s the first question that many asked.
“If something happened to me, to my friend, my mother, my sister, do we have to go to California to deal with it? Or am I going to be protected by my own state?” she asked.
Aysia Arias chanted alongside the downtown Tucson crowd Tuesday in sunglasses and a white t-shirt. As a full-spectrum doula, Arias’ job is to support pregnant people with any choice they make, whether that means carrying a pregnancy to term or choosing to have an abortion.
She said attending the protest was important in showing solidarity with the spectrum of people she helps.
“I’m just here to show my support for the people that are here and to show that resistance is really important in times like this,” she said.
As abortion laws in the country get stricter and reproductive healthcare access more limited, she said, people are relying more on doulas for guidance and support.
“That’s why people like me are very important. Sometimes we’re the only person that can give someone a ride or help someone find a place to stay or just let people know that they actually have options,” she said.
Planned Parenthood Arizona operates a doula program in which doulas volunteer to “support patients through their abortion experience, as well as those experiencing miscarriage or fetal loss, patients currently going through gender affirming hormone therapy, or patients in need of extra support during family planning or gynecological procedures.”
But Arias and others in her position are having to fortify their own security as restrictions and criminalization in the realm of reproductive healthcare increases.
The Arizona abortion ban sets a robust set of criteria for who can be punished under the law and those prosecuted face two to five years in prison: “A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years.”
“How can we support ourselves as that support system and how do we keep ourselves out of jail? So there’s been a lot of conversations about that through doula networks, and how to go about that. And it’s pretty dicey,” Arias said.
Isa Mundo is on a megaphone at the downtown Tucson rally on Tuesday, reading from a list of chants online and she is exasperated when she sees how old the list is: probably from the ‘70s. Women have been chanting at events like this for generations.
Jamie Schafroth, a graduate student in the University of Arizona’s Anthropology Department with a focus on sexual violence, attended the protest outside Tucson’s city hall. She said the topic of reproductive healthcare is important to her both personally and academically.
“I work with sexual abuse and assault victims — I am one myself — and I think accessing reproductive choices and resources is vital for both restoring some sort of dignity but also for some level of structural competence around the area,” she said.
She said restrictive abortion access affects individuals, like herself, but also medical infrastructure. In states like Texas, where abortion was largely outlawed in 2022, OB-GYN departments are having to send doctors-in-training out of state to learn how to perform abortions and practicing physicians are moving because of recent reproductive health legislation.
“I think, for me personally, it’s certainly scary living in a state in which your mobility is restricted, in which you’re surveilled at a higher rate and criminalized and stuff. And I have a lot of friends who are doctors and they can’t do their jobs, because of the changing legislation around abortions,” she said.
Moving forward, Schafroth and her community plan on supporting the pro-abortion movement politically and helping individuals negatively affected by anti-abortion policies.
“For my social circle, collectively, certainly doing things like this — protesting and mobilizing political action — and also caring for the people who are unable to receive abortions or have been stigmatized because of it, or just try to grant access through other methods too,” she said.
She highlighted that this type of legislation compounds existing disparities in the medical system, hitting marginalized communities the hardest. Communities of color are at a higher risk for “poor health outcomes,” experiencing “higher rates of illness and death” compared to their white counterparts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I think it highlights this need to build solidarity around where oppression hits the most,” she said. “And so that means viewing that abortion is not just necessarily it is a women’s issue but it also affects the lives of trans and queer people, and affects the lives of black and brown people who will be forced to carry a pregnancy; who are going to endure medical racism at a much higher rate.”
Tuesday’s news came as a surprise to University of Arizona senior Nadira Mitchell only because the political climate in Arizona seemed to be trending more progressive in recent years. She noted that people in power tend to represent older generations and mindsets.
“At the end of the day, it’s frustrating that the people who are making these decisions do not wholly and truly reflect us as a people,” Mitchell said, adding that Arizona has a diverse culture and heritage.
Mitchell, who is Navajo, said reproductive health access for Indigenous people in Arizona was already dire and Tuesday’s ruling only further hinders it.
“As Indigenous people specifically, we faced so many hurdles and challenges brought on by unjust laws on stolen land and the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision is an example of how a ban, law or an act perpetuates systemic injustice and further marginalizes Indigenous communities,” she said.
Growing up in Tucson, topics like abortion were normalized compared to what they would’ve been in the past, according to Mitchell, who is 23 years old. Younger generation Arizonans seem to be “a lot more open-hearted and open-minded about people making the best decision for themselves,” she said.
They also have varying ideas about what constitutes family, Mitchell said. “Maybe that doesn’t involve having kids of your own,” she said. “Maybe that involves just having pets or maybe it includes just found family, friends that you consider as family.”
Things like climate change, overpopulation and the economy also play a major role in how young people are planning their futures, Mitchell said.
“Having children is an investment,” she said. “And I just think the increase in inflation, over time, isn’t on equal footing compared to our parents, they maybe had an easier time finding housing and being able to pay for a child.”
Rae Dudoit, 20, is a junior at the University of Arizona and a member of the Women in Medical Sciences club on campus. She felt shocked and confused by the news.
“Especially seeing the year that the decision was made from,” Dudoit said. “That is so long ago so you would hope and you would think that those decisions back then would not have consequences now in the way that they do.”
“I think, as women of color, we are always disproportionately impacted by things like this,” she said.
If given the chance to speak to the justices who made this decision, Dudoit said the justices get so caught up in what they would do and what they think is right that they forget that being able to say and act upon that is a choice in and of itself.
“You’re not just acting upon what you would do,” Dudoit said. “You’re making decisions for other people and the decisions they’re making have no regard for these people.”
The ruling seemed less about morality and more about punishment that disproportionately impacts women, she added.
Meanwhile, Grace Beichler, a 20-year-old sophomore from California, said she was upset by the ruling and reconsidering whether she wants to live in Arizona.
“I felt like this was somewhere where I could be safe knowing that if worse came to worse — like if I were to get raped — I would be safe and I wouldn’t have to bear the child of someone I didn’t know and ruined my life, and iIve had friends where that has happened and now not having that safety sucks,” she said.
Carolina Cuellar, Chelsea Curtis, John Washington, Noor Haghighi and Kiara Adams contributed to this article.
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