Arizona’s ‘dangerous’ rule on abortion will set women in the state ‘back more than a century,’ White House says
Arizona’s recent ruling on abortion is “dangerous” and will set women in the state “back more than a century — to a time before Arizona was even a state,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Saturday morning.
Jean-Pierre’s comments came a day after a judge lifted a decades-old injunction blocking the enforcement of a 1901 Arizona law that bans nearly all abortions. The only exemption to that pre-statehood ban is when the mother’s life is at risk.
On Friday, Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson granted a request by the state’s attorney general, Mark Brnovic, to lift an injunction that was put in place after the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide.
Brnovic asked the court to lift the near-50-year-old injunction in July, shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
Johnson’s ruling — which takes effect immediately, but is expected to be appealed — means that abortion clinics in the state will have to close their doors.
It also means that anyone seeking an abortion will need to travel out of state.
FILE - Protesters march around the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Friday, June 24, 2022. A new Arizona law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy takes effect Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022 as a judge weighs a request to allow a pre-statehood law that outlaws nearly all abortions to be enforced. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File) (Ross D. Franklin/)
“If this decision stands, health care providers would face imprisonment of up to five years for fulfilling their duty of care; survivors of rape and incest would be forced to bear the children of their assaulters; and women with medical conditions would face dire health risks,” Jean-Pierre said, slamming the potential consequences of the ruling as “catastrophic” and “unacceptable.”
In a statement released after the ruling Friday, Brnovich applauded the court for “upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue.”
But Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that the ruling was “out of step with the will of Arizonans” and would “cruelly force pregnant people to leave their communities to access abortion.”
Jean-Pierre on Saturday agreed with McGill Johnson, saying that the “backwards decision” exemplified a “disturbing trend across the country of Republican officials at the local and national level dead-set on stripping women of their rights, including through Senator [Lindsey] Graham’s proposed national abortion ban.”
Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, earlier this month introduced a bill in Congress that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy nationwide.
On Friday, President Joe Biden mentioned Graham’s bill at an event in Washington, saying that the election of two more Democrats in the Senate would allow him to “once again make Roe the law of the land” and “once again protect a woman’s right to choose.”
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “will continue to push Congress to codify Roe to protect women’s access to abortion and health care,” Jean-Pierre said.
With News Wire Services
