On Wednesday, Donald Trump said the Arizona Supreme Court ruling that restored an 1864 ban on all abortions “went too far.” Even Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake, an anti-abortion zealot, begged Gov. Katie Hobbs for help and asked the state legislature to pass “an immediate common sense solution.”
But that same evening, when Republicans in the Arizona Legislature had a chance to address the 1864 law, they used another option—they ran for the exits. GOP lawmakers ignored votes to suspend the archaic law and instead voted to take a recess. Twice.
Republicans aren’t taking immediate action. They’re not even taking less-than-immediate action. Their reaction to efforts to repeal the 1864 ban was to get out of town for the next week.
As AZ Mirror reports, Republican state Rep. Matt Gress made a motion to suspend the House rules and allow an immediate vote on a bill to repeal the 1864 law that was slipped in between a ban on prizefighting and just ahead of a regulation setting the age of consent at 10. But instead of taking the immediate action that Trump, Lake, and so many others in the party called for in public, the Republican-controlled legislature had an alternative proposal: a call for a short recess.
When Republicans returned from their break, Democrats in the House again tried to get a vote scheduled, with state Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton arguing that leaving the archaic law on the books meant that “people will die.” Instead, Republicans once again voted to take a break—this time shutting down the Arizona House until April 17.
The fact that calls for blocking the law didn’t get the kind of action some national figures claimed they wanted should not be a surprise. Both Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Peterson are supporters of the 1864 law. Toma and Peterson provided an amicus brief in favor of restoring the Civil War-era legislation.
That brief called for the state Supreme Court to vacate a decision blocking the implementation of the law, saying, “the Court should vacate the Court of Appeals’ opinion, and give effect to all of Arizona’s laws restricting abortion”—including the 1864 ban.
Toma and Peterson claimed their reason for submitting the brief was “to articulate the perspective of the legislative branch.” So it’s no surprise that instead of moving to repeal the 1864 law, Republicans in Arizona’s Legislature chose to duck and run. This means that, for at least the next week, the ban that threatens anyone involved in an abortion with two to five years in prison remains in effect.
That schism between national Republican figures’ public proclamations and Republican legislators’ actions on the front line perfectly captures the overall GOP position on abortion: They don’t have a clue about how to pull themselves out of the hole they’ve spent 50 years digging.
Increasingly harsh anti-abortion rhetoric has been at the core of the Republican Party for decades. Abortion has been the issue the GOP has leaned on for turnout in many states, and anti-abortion activists have been used as ground troops for Republican efforts.
Those activists believe that life begins at conception—a concept now at the heart of a lot of Republican abortion legislation. For those who share this belief, the Arizona ruling, and even the Alabama ruling against in-vitro fertilization, are considered “wins.”
However, while those activists may be a big deal in the Republican base, they are a small and shrinking minority of the general public. Support for abortion rights has continued to grow since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. As the 2024 election looms, the abortion issue could result in Democratic gains in state after state, especially those with statewide referendums or constitutional amendments protecting the right to an abortion on the ballot.
Arizona and Florida are likely to be two of those states. Losing either of those states would be a disaster for Republicans, and every time a story like the ruling that restored the 1864 law makes the news the odds of a blue tide driven by a demand for securing abortion rights becomes greater. Republicans must fix this, and fix it fast, before it becomes the dominant issue in November. They know that. This is why Donald Trump is making statements that seem to contradict themselves by the day.
Republicans have reached a point where they’re willing to offend those anti-abortion activists if it will just make this issue go away.
They really do need to fix this. Only … they don’t know how.
It’s only April, but the Washington Post’s new report on GOP golden boy Tim Sheehy is a strong contender for the craziest political story of the year. On this week’s episode of “The Downballot,” co-hosts David Nir and David Beard dissect the countless contradictions in Sheehy’s tales about a bullet wound that he either received in Afghanistan or in a national park three years later. The Davids also explain why the Arizona Supreme Court’s appalling new ruling banning nearly all abortions could lead to two conservative justices losing their seats this fall.