Arizona almost completely bans abortion

In front of the Arizona Supreme Court (United States), women demonstrated for the right to abortion on Tuesday April 9. A few minutes earlier, judges announced an almost total ban on abortion in this state, even in cases of incest, rape or fetal malformation. Abortion will only be possible in the event of a threat to the mother’s life. “This decision is dangerous, it is based on a law written 160 years ago“, commented Kate Gallego, the Democratic mayor of Phoenix (Arizona).

The Attorney General denounces a “cruel law”

The judges’ decision is based on a text from 1864, at the time when women did not have the right to vote. Prison sentences of two to five years are even planned for doctors who help women to have an abortion. Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General, Kristin Mayes, has said she wants to oppose it. “As long as I am in office in Arizona, we will refuse to prosecute women and doctors based on this cruel law“, she says.

In 2022, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the right to abortion was not guaranteed by the Constitution.