Many of you will have noticed the latest fascinating state-level legal development in America’s renewed-but-decentralized struggle over abortion. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of Arizona ruled that an absolute state ban on abortions dating back to 1864 is still enforceable living law despite innumerable legal changes since.

An awful lot of our readers live in Arizona for about half the year, and most of you probably know that Arizona didn’t enter the Union as a state until 1912. So this is a law that was written when Arizona was still mostly unoccupied and half-wild — with the American Civil War still raging to the east.