While we cannot snap our fingers and change the dynamic at the U.S. or Arizona Supreme Court, we can make our voices heard at the ballot box.
Update May 3 at 9:05 a.m. PT: In Arizona, after weeks of delay, the state Senate finally voted to repeal the state’s 1864 abortion ban. The Senate is Republican-controlled—all 11 Democrats and two of the 19 Republicans joined them to vote to repeal the ban. However, because the legislature did not add an emergency provision, the ban will stay in place before the repeal takes effect—meaning that there is going to be a window where abortion is fully banned in the state. Advocates, including Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, are hoping that the state’s Supreme Court delays the implementation of the ban in order to reduce or eliminate this window.
“Arizona women should not have to live in a state where politicians make decisions that should be between a woman and her doctor,” Hobbs said in a statement. “While this repeal is essential for protecting women’s lives, it is just the beginning of our fight to protect reproductive healthcare in Arizona. I will continue to call on the legislature to pass the Arizona Right to Contraception Act and protect [in vitro fertilization] from ongoing attacks. And I encourage every Arizonan to make their voices heard this November when abortion rights will be on the ballot.”
Tuesday, April 9, 2024, will go down in history. It is the day that far-right extremists got what they wanted in Arizona: a near-total ban on abortion. It is the day the Arizona Supreme Court turned the clock back 160 years—to a time before women could vote and before Arizona was even a state. It is a day that we will look back on with shame and horror.
Like so many Arizona moms, my first thought was of my daughter, who was born last July in a post-Roe America. I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around the fact that my daughter’s rights had been ripped away from her, that she could very well grow up in a world where she has less freedom than her mother and grandmothers had.
The inevitable consequences of this abortion ban for women and girls of her generation are almost too horrible to think about. We’ve all heard the stories about life pre-Roe: young girls and victims of rape or incest forced to give birth or seek dangerous back-alley abortions, doctors and nurses who face jail time for daring to provide abortion care, women dying from lack of access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare.
In states like Texas, where anti-abortion extremists have already succeeded in implementing an extreme abortion ban, we can already see the impacts. Last year, a Texas mom, Kate Cox, was denied an abortion by the Texas Supreme Court, even after learning her fetus had a fatal condition that would also threaten her life and future fertility. Eventually, she was forced to leave her home state to get the medically necessary abortion that she required. And she is one of the lucky ones.
We’ll never know the true number of women across the country who have been forced to give birth against their will since Dobbs, but we know it’s appallingly high. A research letter in JAMA Medical Journal estimates that, since Dobbs, nearly 65,000 pregnancies in 14 states that imposed total bans on abortion have been the result of rape.
Similarly, we will never know the full extent of the consequences of unsafe abortions that will take place in the shadows of a total abortion ban. All we do know is that they will be happening.
It’s about controlling women and what we do with our bodies. It’s about rolling back our autonomy and taking us back to a time where women didn’t have a voice in our government.
Sydney Gallego, wife of U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego
Abortion bans do not stop abortions from happening—they just make safe abortions rare, and unsafe abortions painfully common.
Many working-class and young women seeking abortions will be forced out of clinics to receive unregulated treatment that may threaten their lives and reproductive health.
That’s the dystopian future the anti-abortion movement is fighting for.
Truthfully, I don’t believe any of this is about caring about who gives birth and who doesn’t—otherwise they wouldn’t be threatening IVF. It’s about controlling women and what we do with our bodies. It’s about rolling back our autonomy and taking us back to a time where women didn’t have a voice in our government.
While we cannot snap our fingers and change the dynamic at the U.S. or Arizona Supreme Court, we can make our voices heard at the ballot box. Already, we have seen voters decisively reject anti-abortion ballot measures and politicians in virtually every competitive contest since Dobbs, and even some that no one expected to be competitive.
The truth is that many of the anti-abortion politicians who have shepherded anti-abortion legislation through their state legislatures are only in office because abortion rights were long protected by Roe.
In overturning Roe and reinstating Arizona’s archaic 1864 abortion ban, the anti-abortion movement has unintentionally unleashed the full electoral power of women and we will not rest until the right to abortion is codified into law once again. Come November, Arizona women are going to come out in full force to vote for our right to control our own bodies.
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