On Wednesday, the Arizona House of Representatives voted to repeal a near-total abortion ban from 1864 that was upheld by the state’s Supreme Court earlier this month. Three Republican lawmakers broke from their party to join Democrats in striking down the law, the Arizona Mirror reports, which carries with it a mandatory prison sentence for doctors who provide an abortion for any reason other than saving a woman’s life, over a 15-week gestational ban passed in 2022. Several previous attempts to repeal the 160-year-old law in the state legislature were blocked by the GOP majority.
Republicans who supported the 1864 near-total ban denounced the repeal during a litany of floor speeches, and criticized their colleagues who they viewed as going against the party’s core values. “I am disgusted today,” said Rep. Rachel Jones, R-Tucson. “Life is one of the tenets of our Republican platform. To see people go back on that value is egregious to me.” But a Republican defector, Rep. Tim Dunn, who was just one of two in his party to vote to repeal the law, said he believed the 1864 ban would ultimately lead to more permissive abortion laws. “Should the pre-Roe law remain in effect, I firmly believe more lives will be lost over time,” Dunn wrote on X. “The public backlash would result in codifying disturbing and unlimited abortions in the Arizona Constitution, which is something that I cannot allow to happen.”