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    Arizona house votes to repeal near-total ban on abortion

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    Lawmakers in the Arizona house have voted to repeal a controversial 1864 law banning nearly all abortions, amid mounting pressure from the state’s Republicans.Three Republicans joined in with all 29 Democrats on Wednesday to support the repeal of the law, which predates Arizona’s statehood and provides no exceptions for rape or incest.The move follows weeks of effort in the state legislature to address an issue that put Republicans on the defensive in a battleground state for the presidential election. The measure will now head to the state senate, where it is expected to pass, and then to the governor’s desk.The Arizona supreme court earlier this month concluded the state can enforce a long-dormant law that permits abortions only to save the pregnant patient’s life. The ruling suggested doctors could be prosecuted under the law, first approved in 1864, and anyone who assists in an abortion could face two to five years in prison.The ruling put enormous pressure on Republicans in the state, who on the one hand are under fire from some conservatives in their base who firmly support the abortion ban, and from swing voters who strongly oppose the measure and will decide crucial races including the presidency, the US Senate and the GOP’s control of the legislature.Some prominent Republicans, including the GOP candidate for Senate, Kari Lake, have come out against the ban. But Republicans in the statehouse so far have blocked efforts by Democratic lawmakers to repeal the law.A week ago, one Republican in the Arizona house joined 29 Democrats to bring the repeal measure to a vote, but the effort failed twice on 30-30 votes. Democrats hoped one more Republican would cross party lines on Wednesday so that the repeal bill can be brought up for a vote. There appears to be enough support for repeal in the Arizona senate.Meanwhile, the office of the Arizona attorney general, Kris Mayes, on Tuesday asked the state supreme court to reconsider its decision, the Arizona Republic reported.View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, dozens of people gathered outside the state capitol before the House and Senate were scheduled to meet, many of them carrying signs or wearing shirts showing their opposition to abortion rights.The civil war-era law had been blocked since the US supreme court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion nationwide.After Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022, the then Arizona attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican, persuaded a state judge that the 1864 ban could be enforced. Still, the law has not actually been enforced while the case makes its way through the courts. Mayes urged the state’s highest court not to revive the law.Mayes has said the earliest the law could be enforced was 8 June, though the anti-abortion group defending the ban, the Alliance Defending Freedom, maintains county prosecutors can begin enforcing it once the supreme court’s decision becomes final, which is expected to occur this week.If the proposed repeal is signed into law by the Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, a 2022 statute banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy would become the prevailing abortion law.Many abortion providers in the state have vowed to continue providing the procedure until the ban goes into effect. In neighboring California, providers are gearing up to treat Arizona patients seeking abortion care when the ban goes into effect. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, announced on Wednesday he’s introducing a proposal that would allow Arizona doctors to perform abortions for their clients in California. The change would only apply to doctors licensed in good standing in Arizona and their patients, and last through the end of November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThe battle over abortion access in Arizona will ultimately be decided in November. Abortion rights advocates are pushing an effort to ask Arizona voters to create a constitutional right to abortion. They have collected about 500,000 signatures, more than the almost 384,000 needed to put it on the ballot.The proposed constitutional amendment would guarantee abortion rights until a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks. It also would allow later abortions to save the parent’s life, or to protect her physical or mental health.Republican lawmakers, in turn, are considering putting one or more competing abortion proposals on the November ballot.A leaked planning document outlined the approaches being considered by house Republicans, such as codifying existing abortion regulations, proposing a 14-week ban that would be “disguised as a 15-week law” because it would allow abortions until the beginning of the 15th week, and a measure that would prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant.House Republicans have not yet publicly released any such proposed ballot measures.Reproductive rights advocates say the issue has mobilized voters and report that people are seeking out signature-gatherers and asking about locations where their friends and family can sign to put abortion access on the ballot.“I’ve had women come up with three kids, and they’re signing. And I tell them, moms are the most important signature here, because they understand what this issue is, and what pregnancy does to the body, what pregnancy does to your life,” Susan Anthony, who has been gathering signatures in Arizona, told the Guardian.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      ‘Have you signed yet?’: Arizona activists battle to overturn near-total abortion ban

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      As people streamed into the empanada restaurant, Susan Anthony made eye contact, pointing to her sign that asked whether they were pro-choice.“Have you signed yet?” she asked patrons at the establishment in Mesa, Arizona. She carried a clipboard with petition sheets for a citizen’s initiative, a ballot measure that would put the right to abortion access in the swing state’s constitution.Since the state supreme court ruled on 9 April that lawmakers in Arizona intended to fully ban abortion, the signatures have come in more quickly, Anthony said.“No, but I’d like to.”“I drove here to sign this.”“I’ve been wanting to.”“I’ve signed it, probably multiple times.”“I’m going to tell my friend to come here and sign it.”Starting the day the ruling came down, the Arizona for Abortion Access measure has seen its volunteers grow from about 3,000 to more than 5,000, spokeswoman Dawn Penich said. More than 5,300 small-dollar donors gave money for the first time since the ruling. The group is not giving out a new total update for the number of signatures, but Penich said that volunteers brought in 2,200 signatures to get notarized in one hour at a Phoenix coffee shop.A handful of legislative Republicans have been scrambling since the ruling to try to peel back the outright ban, first passed there in 1864, before Arizona was a state, and instead reaffirm the more recent law, a 15-week ban. In the House, Democrats and a couple of Republicans could again try to force the repeal to a vote this Wednesday, the third attempt in recent weeks.The battle for abortion access in this swing state will ultimately be decided on November’s ballot, where voters will probably face multiple questions. Democrats also hope the issue will turn out enough voters to flip the statehouse blue, and some Republican officials are now worried about how the ruling, which most of them wanted, will affect their political prospects. Those in swing districts and close races, including Donald Trump and the US Senate candidate Kari Lake, have spoken against the ruling despite previously supporting abortion bans.In the house, efforts to move toward repealing the ban have so far failed, while the senate limped forward. A document detailing plans to derail the citizen’s ballot measure, accidentally sent to all lawmakers, floated the idea of sending three separate questions from the legislature directly to voters, bypassing the Democratic governor and confusing the issue at the ballot.In the meantime, the 1864 ban could go into effect as early as 8 June. The Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, has said her office will not prosecute providers over abortions at any point. And neighboring California is working to allow Arizona abortion providers a way to get licensed quickly there to assist their patients, anticipating more people will cross state lines for care.Legislature in limboThe abortion access measure would allow abortions without any limitations until the point of fetal viability, and access to abortion after viability if a healthcare provider determines it is needed to protect the patient’s life or physical and mental health.The legislature has several routes it could take: doing nothing, and upholding the 1864 ban; repealing the ban, which would set a 15-week limit as the prevailing law; sending one or more questions to voters to set limits on abortion access.The abortion access measure needs about 384,000 valid signatures from Arizona voters by 3 July to make the ballot and has reported collecting more than 500,000 so far. But the state applies strict scrutiny to citizens’ initiatives, with intense requirements for each signature and the people collecting them. In recent years, groups have sued, at times successfully, to remove signatures for various reasons in attempts to keep measures from reaching the ballot.“We know the Republicans in the next three months are going to do everything in their power to try to take that initiative off the ballot,” the former Democratic lawmaker and congressional candidate Raquel Terán said at an abortion rights rally last Friday. “So we should not count on just half a million – we need to turn in a million signatures or more. Do not stop. We cannot stop, nor take any signature for granted.”Lawmakers do not have to collect any signatures to put their questions to voters, and they don’t need the governor’s approval. Instead, they can vote to send any number of questions to the ballot directly.But to get the repeal up for a vote, some Republican lawmakers would need to vote against their party’s leaders to override normal procedures – and they have so far been unwilling. Republican representative David Cook predicted that could happen this week, telling Phoenix public radio outlet KJZZ that there would be enough votes to alter rules and allow the repeal up for a vote.While a few Republican lawmakers have said they think the ban goes too far, others have held fast to their support for it. The Center for Arizona Policy, an influential state organization responsible for lobbying for strict anti-abortion laws for decades, called on lawmakers to oppose any efforts to repeal the ban.View image in fullscreen“Political posturing for the sake of votes and back-pedalling when faced with hostility only feeds voter cynicism at the cost of human life,” the group said in a statement.The house speaker, Ben Toma, a Republican, has defended the ban and is not in favor of repealing it, despite the potential political consequences. Toma is now running for an open congressional seat in a crowded GOP primary where Trump has already endorsed one of his opponents. Toma is not currently available for interviews.“It comes down to: what do I think is right? What is just? What is ethical? And I have made my decision. And I am not going to change my mind,” he recently told the New York Times.Beyond the repeal machinations, Republicans are trying to figure out what, if anything, they should send to the ballot. The presentation of options, written by the Arizona house Republican general counsel, Linley Wilson, floated three potential ballot referrals:
      A “complementary (not conflicting)” measure that would include policies like only physicians being allowed to perform abortions and parental consent for minors seeking them. This would require the courts to consider it alongside the constitutional access measure.
      A 14-week ban “disguised as a 15-week law” because it would outlaw abortion beyond the beginning of the 15th week of pregnancy. This “dilutes” the votes for the access measure and makes it more likely to fail.
      A “heartbeat protection act” that makes abortion illegal after six weeks unless the mother’s life is at risk, the fetus has an abnormality or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.
      These paths change the narrative, Wilson wrote: “Republicans have a plan! And it’s much more reasonable than the (Arizona for Abortion Access) Initiative.” The plan could “pull votes” from the access measure.Energy increases for ballot measureAt the Mesa restaurant, some people stopped by specifically to sign the petition, asking if there were other locations they could send their family and friends to. Some, carrying babies or holding toddlers’ hands, said they had been meaning to sign and took a pen.“I’ve had women come up with three kids, and they’re signing. And I tell them, moms are the most important signature here, because they understand what this issue is, and what pregnancy does to the body, what pregnancy does to your life,” Anthony said.Others avoided eye contact or said they weren’t interested. Some said they weren’t registered to vote or simply didn’t vote. Some days, a person will stroll by and call her a baby killer. Anthony doesn’t engage – she’s not trying to convince the opposition right now; she’s trying to find the people already in favor of abortion rights and get them to sign.After Roe v Wade fell, Anthony, a 69-year-old retiree, made it her life’s mission to get the Arizona abortion access on the ballot. Anthony, a lifelong Democrat, didn’t want to share her political leanings when she first moved to the red state of Arizona in the 1980s. Now she spends her days sitting at tables in restaurants and businesses, even at trailheads to snag hikers before they set off. Some hikers tell her she shouldn’t be there, that they’re just trying to enjoy nature; then others come up and say thank you.Since the ruling this month, the energy has shifted. It’s “night and day”, with people seeking out places to sign the measure, Anthony said. At a shift at a bottle shop, college students posted on social media after signing and got more people to stop by. At a boutique in Scottsdale, in a wealthier area known for business-type Republicans, signers told her, this isn’t right, as they added their signature to the petition sheets.The other side is going door to door and rallying at the statehouse, too. When Democrats tried to put the repeal of the 1864 ban up for a vote last week, anti-abortion advocates filled the gallery.At an abortion rights rally last Friday evening hosted by a handful of left-leaning groups, Democratic officials detailed the importance of the ballot measure and voting for their party to take the legislature, win the US Senate seat and go for Joe Biden – a sign that abortion directly on the ballot influences how other races could go.They made clear to a few dozen attendees: the ban is now in place because of Trump’s US supreme court nominees, who overturned Roe vs Wade. The 1864 ban is still in place because Arizona Republicans explicitly voted to keep it there as recently as two years ago. It hasn’t been repealed yet because legislative Republicans have blocked Democrats’ efforts to do so for years.The backlash to the ban has taken aim at Arizona’s supreme court, too, where two justices are up for retention elections. A progressive group, Progress Arizona, is raising money for a campaign to oust the Republican justices Clint Bolick and Kathryn H King.“The fact is, even if we were to repeal this ban, that is not the end of the fight,” the Democratic state representative Oscar de los Santos told the crowd. “This November, we have an election that isn’t merely a choice between two parties: it is a choice between two visions, between freedom and fascism, between hope and hate, between 1864 and 2024.”Anthony hopes she won’t have to gather signatures for abortion access again. She thinks the measure will make it to the ballot this year, and from there, it’s up to the voters. But a lot of other factors are in limbo, like the rights of Arizonans to access abortion care in the state.“I am most concerned at this point by anything that [Republicans] are going to put on there to muddy the waters, to confuse people,” Anthony said. “That’s what I’m concerned with. So I’m anxious to hear from our folks what the strategy will be come 3 July, when we deliver the boxes to the secretary of state. So what happens then? What are we doing then?” More

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      Planned Parenthood Plans $10 Million Boost for Democrats in North Carolina

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      Aiming to bring the national fight over abortion access to a key battleground state, a political arm of Planned Parenthood will spend $10 million on organizing efforts in North Carolina this year, its largest-ever investment in a single state.The money will pay for digital advertisements, new field offices and a canvassing operation concentrated in a handful of swing counties. The leaders of the group, Planned Parenthood Votes South Atlantic, say it plans to knock on more than one million doors through the end of 2024 to talk to voters about preserving abortion access.Even though abortion is not explicitly on the ballot in North Carolina, Democrats are banking on the issue to animate the state’s competitive race for governor and, they hope, to galvanize voters to boost President Biden in the process. A Democratic candidate hasn’t won the state since 2008, and Mr. Biden lost it to former President Donald J. Trump in 2020 by just over a percentage point.North Carolina is also the last state in the Deep South where abortion is still legal after six weeks of pregnancy, a fact Democrats have sought to highlight in underscoring the stakes for voters. The Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, has endorsed a ban on all abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected — one he said he would push to pass if elected.“As we head into November, all eyes are on North Carolina because abortion access across the entire region will be determined by the results of this election,” said Emily Thompson, the deputy director of Planned Parenthood Votes South Atlantic and spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Votes, the group’s national super PAC. “Our success is absolutely critical this year to protect abortion access and defend the bodily autonomy of every North Carolinian.”Democrats and their allies are banking on Mr. Robinson’s incendiary past comments about abortion, combined with growing grass-roots momentum, to propel both Mr. Biden and Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general and the Democratic nominee for governor. Planned Parenthood’s political investment will also focus on 16 state House and Senate races, where Democrats need to win just one additional seat to break the G.O.P.’s supermajority.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As College Students Protest, Harris Keeps Her Focus on Abortion

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      Vice President Kamala Harris, campaigning on Monday in Wisconsin, again took sharp swipes at former President Donald J. Trump for his actions on abortion, a hot topic across the country. But she stayed silent on the war in Gaza, another issue erupting elsewhere among the critical bloc of young voters she has been courting.The split screen captured the advantages and challenges for Democrats as they head into the presidential election in November. Even as the party is looking to galvanize voters over the wave of abortion restrictions in numerous states since Roe v. Wade was overturned, it is facing internal divisions among key parts of its coalition.On Monday, as demonstrations gripped college campuses on the East Coast, Ms. Harris kept her attention squarely focused on Mr. Trump and what she described as his attacks on women. She cast the 2024 election as a choice over the preservation of freedom, which she called “fundamental to the promise of America.”“This is a moment where we must stand up for foundational, fundamental values and principles,” she told roughly 100 people at a community center in La Crosse, in the western part of the state. “When we think about what is at stake, it is absolutely about freedom.”Abortion rights have become a focus of President Biden’s re-election bid, and Ms. Harris has had a leading role.Her La Crosse event was part of daylong trip to the battleground state that was focused on official and campaign duties centered on health care and reproductive rights. Earlier in the day, Ms. Harris met for a round-table discussion with health care workers and leaders and unveiled two Biden administration rule changes meant to benefit hundreds of thousands of health care workers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘This is a violent attack against women’: Florida Senate candidate seeks to channel abortion outrage

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      A round table on abortion rights, hosted by Florida’s Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, has only just begun, and already she finds herself comforting a woman in tears with a very personal story to tell.The woman is from Colombia, and speaks softly in Spanish as she tells the intimate gathering of the Miami-Dade Hispanic Democratic Caucus about the distressing decision her daughter had to make to terminate a pregnancy after learning the fetus was not developing.“In Colombia, which tends to be a very conservative country, she was glad supportive medical professionals were there for her daughter in the decision, and grateful she had access to good-quality healthcare for it,” said Mucarsel-Powell.“It was traumatic and painful, but at least they could rely on that healthcare. I’m just seeing outrage, from men and women, that here, families are faced with having to live in a state where you will not be able to get that care, because most women don’t even know they’re pregnant at six weeks.”She was referring to the ruling by Florida’s supreme court earlier this month that will allow a six-week abortion ban, with few exceptions for rape or incest, to take effect on 1 May. It will end the state’s position as a bulwark of access to the procedure in the south-eastern US.Yet it has also acted as rocket fuel to the campaign of Mucarsel-Powell, an Ecuador-born former congresswoman and mother of two daughters. She seized on the issue to launch a statewide Freedom Tour championing the protection of abortion rights and exposing the “unapologetic and proud” support for the ban on the part of her opponent in November, the incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott.View image in fullscreenThe Hispanic Caucus event in Coral Gables was only the third of the tour, but Mucarsel-Powell said it was already clear that abortion is a “top-of-mind” issue galvanizing voters, as it is in other Republican-controlled states that have curtailed reproductive rights since the US supreme court ended almost 50 years of federal protections with its 2022 reversal of Roe v Wade.On Monday, her campaign announced it had raised over $3.5m in the first quarter of the year, with more than 5,300 new donors since the supreme court ruling. And Democrats across Florida are also sensing wind in their sails as opposition to the ban, as well as support for a court-approved ballot initiative that could enshrine access to the procedure in the state’s constitution, hardens.“This is a violent attack against women, because it is fundamental for us to make that decision on our own, with our healthcare provider, with our families, with our faith,” Mucarsel-Powell told the Guardian in an interview following the round table.“This is about protecting privacy, protecting healthcare for women, making sure that there’s no government interference, especially from extreme politicians like Rick Scott. I can tell you what people are thinking about this, and that it’s affecting women living in the state of Florida that were sent home when they thought they were having a miscarriage, and they weren’t able to get that healthcare.“And then they got very ill, and almost died because they didn’t receive that healthcare. So this is a top-of-mind issue, like so many other issues, but we’ll see in November how voters decide what are going to be their priorities. I think they’re going to make things very clear.”View image in fullscreenAlso clear is Mucarsel-Powell’s disdain for Scott, who she believes is vulnerable in November as he defends the seat he narrowly won from the incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson in 2018 by only 10,000 votes from 8.2m cast.“If he goes back to the Senate, he will push for a national abortion ban,” she said. “His true agenda includes signing away women’s reproductive rights and trying to control their bodies.“And he knows he will have to answer for his support of Florida’s ban in November. The choice is going to be very clear for voters, they know who I am, they know what I stand for, and who and what Rick Scott isn’t.An Emerson College poll this week showed that 42% of Florida voters planned to vote for the constitutional amendment that would overturn the Florida ban, far short of the 60% it would need to pass.Yet Mucarsel-Powell sees hope in the 32% who say they are still unsure. “A lot of people don’t know that this amendment is on the ballot, so the movement that has been created and has built this infrastructure on the ground is ready to make sure that everyone knows this is an issue,” she said.“The work is happening, it will continue to happen, and I think in November, the majority of Floridians will know that they have a choice. I believe they’re going to come out and vote for freedom.” More

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      Republicans divided over abortion ahead of elections – podcast

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      Last week the Arizona supreme court upheld a law first passed in 1864, which, if it goes into effect, will ban almost all abortions in the state. Democrats were quick to denounce the ruling, but some prominent Republicans were not happy with it either, including Donald Trump.
      Since the overturning of Roe v Wade nearly two years ago, individual states have had the ability to restrict abortion rights and several have jumped at the chance.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland and Moira Donegan of Guardian US discuss why Republicans are divided on restrictions they worked so hard to put in place. Why are once staunch supporters of abortion bans wavering? And as November fast approaches, will abortion be the issue that swings the election?

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      The Kamala Harris Moment Has Arrived

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      One of Kamala Harris’s most memorable moments during the 2020 presidential election cycle was when, during a Democratic primary debate, she sharply criticized Joe Biden for working with segregationists in the Senate in their shared opposition to busing.She personalized her criticism, saying: “There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”The power in the attack was not only the point being made but that she — a person affected from a group affected — was making it. Although some of Biden’s defenders saw her remark as a gratuitous broadside, there was an authenticity to the way she confronted the issue.The verbal jab also aligned with the national zeitgeist at a time when calls for racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement were ascendant.She ticked up in the polls, and donations poured in. Ultimately, her candidacy didn’t catch fire, but the following summer, Biden, the eventual nominee, made a historic offer to Harris to join his ticket, leading to her becoming the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to be vice president.Fast-forward to now, when Vice President Harris has served nearly a full term alongside President Biden, and she is moving into another moment when the political stars are aligned for her as the perfect messenger on a subject that has fixed Americans’ attention and is central in the 2024 presidential campaign: reproductive rights.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Under Pressure From Trump, Arizona Republicans Weigh Response to 1864 Abortion Ban

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      Facing mounting pressure to strike down a near-total abortion ban revived last week by Arizona’s Supreme Court, Republican state legislators are considering efforts to undermine a planned ballot measure this fall that would enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution, according to a presentation obtained by The New York Times.The 1864 law that is set to take effect in the coming weeks bans nearly all abortions and mandates prison sentences of two to five years for providing abortion care. The proposed ballot measure on abortion rights, known as the Arizona Abortion Access Act, would enshrine the right to an abortion before viability, or about 24 weeks. Supporters of the measure say they have already gathered enough signatures to put the question on the ballot ahead of a July 3 filing deadline.Republicans in the Legislature are under tremendous pressure to overturn, or at least amend, the 1864 ban. Former President Donald J. Trump, the national standard-bearer of the Republican Party, directly intervened on Friday, calling on Republican legislators, in a frantically worded post online, to “act immediately” to change the law. A top Trump ally in Arizona who is running for the Senate, Kari Lake, has also called for the overturning of the 1864 law, which she had once praised.Abortion rights have been a winning message for Democrats since the Supreme Court, with three justices appointed by Mr. Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. And even though it is an objectively unpopular aspect of his White House legacy, Mr. Trump has repeatedly bragged that he is personally responsible for overturning Roe.Republicans in Arizona, however, have already resisted efforts to repeal the 160-year-old law and are bracing for the potential for another floor battle on the ban that is looming for the Legislature, which is set to convene on Wednesday. The plans that circulated among Republican legislators suggest the caucus is considering other measures that would turn attention away from the 1864 law.The presentation to Republican state legislators, written by Linley Wilson, the general counsel for the Republican majority in the Arizona State Legislature, proposed several ways in which the Republican-controlled Legislature could undermine the ballot measure, known as A.A.A., by placing competing constitutional amendments on the ballot that would limit the right to abortion even if the proposed ballot measure succeeded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Arizona Democrat says enshrining abortion rights in constitution best remedy to 1864 ban

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      Repealing the 1864 near-total abortion ban that Arizona’s state supreme court recently ruled was enforceable would have little effect because “the damage is done”, the Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego said on Sunday.“Any initiative they pass right now wouldn’t even take effect for quite a while,” the US House member and Senate hopeful told NBC News on Sunday, referring to the 90-day delay such a maneuver would undergo before taking effect. He also said a repeal would be vulnerable to being neutralized by future iterations of the state legislature, remarking: “It could just get overturned later by another state house or state senate.”Gallego instead maintained that codifying abortion rights in Arizona’s constitution through a public referendum was the best countermeasure available for the state supreme court decision clearing the way for authorities to enforce a ban with exceptions for medical emergencies – but not for rape or incest.“The only protection we really, really have is to codify this and put this on the ballot and enshrine” the abortion rights once granted federally by the US supreme court’s landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973, Gallego added. “Protect abortion rights.”His comments came five days after the rightwing court’s ruling allowing enforcement of a ban that pre-dates Arizona’s statehood by nearly five decades.The law has not immediately taken effect but is bound to supersede a separate 15-week abortion ban that the state passed separately.An Arizona state lawmaker quickly moved to repeal the 1864 ban but has so far been blocked from advancing his proposal by fellow Republicans.The ruling in question was made possible thanks to the removal of abortion rights at the federal level in 2022 by a US supreme court counting on three conservative justices appointed during Donald Trump’s presidency.The elimination of federal abortion rights have driven Democratic victories in elections ever since. And confronted with the reality that most in the US support at least some level of abortion access, Republicans who cheered the reversal of Roe v Wade scrambled to distance themselves from the Arizona supreme court’s 9 April ruling.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat includes Kari Lake, the Republican who in the fall plans to run for the Arizona US Senate seat held at the moment by the independent Kyrsten Sinema.“This total ban on abortion the Arizona supreme court just ruled on is out of line with where the people of this state are,” Lake – who is endorsed by Trump – said in a video on Thursday. “This is such a personal and private issue.”Lake had previously expressed her approval of Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban after the US supreme court eliminated Roe v Wade – and before she lost the state’s 2022 gubernatorial election to her Democratic rival, Katie Hobbs.And Gallego has seized on that change of position, telling MSNBC recently: “Arizonans aren’t dumb. They know that Kari Lake is lying and is willing to say anything she can to win and to hold power, and they will not trust her with this.”Gallego’s campaign has helped a coalition of reproductive rights groups collect signatures aiming to put a referendum on Arizona’s ballot for the November elections proposing to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.The proposed constitutional amendment would establish a fundamental right to abortions up to about the 24th week of pregnancy, with exceptions to protect lives and physical or mental health of pregnant people.Ballot initiative campaign organizers say they have about 120,000 more signatures than needed to get the issue before voters in November. But that cushion is necessary because those opposed to the campaign have the right to scrutinize and challenge the validity of those signatures.An Iraq war veteran who served with the US marines, Gallego’s first term in the House began in 2015 and he has been representing his current district since early 2023.Both he and Lake are heavily favored to advance out of their respective parties’ Senate primaries in July to run in November for a seat being left vacant by Sinema, who chose to not seek re-election. More