Attorney General files to reinstate Arizona abortion ban

Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a motion to reinstate Arizona’s ban on abortions. This law is asking to lift an injunction that was implemented right after Roe v. Wade which blocked a pre-statehood territorial law that criminalized abortion, according to Jennifer Piatt, Facility Co-Director at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

This law directly targets the provider, not the women receiving the abortion, according to Piatt.

“The provider providing an abortion under this pre-statehood law faces two to five years in prison,” Piatt said.

The current state of abortion rights in Arizona is hard to navigate, since there are so many conflicting laws being reviewed, its difficult for women and providers to determine how to comply with the law, according to Piatt.

“What you see in Arizona is a patchwork of abortion related laws that are not consistent with each other, one of which is from pre-statehood days, that fully bans abortion. But then you have Arizona laws that ban abortion at viability, Arizona laws that ban abortion at gender or race selection, Arizona laws that set up an entire regulatory regime for abortion clinics to provide abortions,” Piatt said.

The law reads:

A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years.