Arizona governor Katie Hobbs on Thursday signed into law a repeal of the near-total abortion ban from 1864, effectively replacing the preexisting law with a 2022 statute that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The governor denounced the ban as it “was passed by 27 men before Arizona was even a state, at a time when America was at war about the right to own slaves,” she said at the legislation’s signing ceremony. “This ban needs to be repealed, I said it in 2022 when Roe was overturned, and I said it again and again as governor.”
Though Hobbs hailed the newly signed legislation as a victory for Arizonans, the repeal won’t take effect until 90 days after the state’s legislative session ends sometime this summer. The current session is expected to conclude in June or July, meaning it won’t go into effect until September at the earliest. The session’s end date has not been scheduled yet.
Meanwhile, the 1864 abortion ban could go into effect as early as June 27. Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes previously said the earliest date it could be enforced was June 8.
The 19th-century law, which predates Arizona’s statehood, bans almost all abortions in the state, excluding those performed to save the life of the mother, and imposes a prison sentence between two to five years for physicians who perform an abortion or help a woman obtain one.
Hobbs and Mayes, both Democrats, have pledged to prevent the ban from being enforced in the state and assured that doctors who perform abortions would not be prosecuted under the law.
“I’ve heard from doctors who were unsure if they would wind up in a jail cell for simply doing their job, women who told me they didn’t know if it was safe to start a family here in Arizona,” Hobbs said Thursday. “These excruciating conversations are exactly why I have made one thing clear, very clear: This ban needs to be repealed.”
Backed by an executive order from the governor, the state attorney general’s office holds the sole authority to prosecute abortion-related crimes.
On Wednesday, the Arizona senate voted in favor of the repeal measure after the Arizona house did the same a week earlier. In both legislative chambers, a few Republican lawmakers broke away from their party’s majority and sided with the Democrats in approving the measure. The bill passed the state senate by a 16–14 margin after an hourslong filibuster, in which senators explained the rationale for their votes.
The repeal faced a prolonged stalemate between Republicans and Democrats for weeks after the Arizona supreme court upheld the 1864 abortion ban last month.
Arizona scrapped the law in 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that women have a constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade. Fifty years later, in 2022, the Court overturned the landmark decision by upholding a Mississippi abortion law, opening the door for states to limit abortions.