Arizona Lawmakers Renew Push To Criminalize Abortions, Latest Challenge To Roe v. Wade

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- A police officer watches pro-life & pro-choice supporters demonstrating to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision in Washington, D.C., Jan. 24, 2011.
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PBS Newshour, Feb. 2, 2021.

Abortion has been at the forefront of conservative politics since the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, in which the court ruled that the Constitution protects a woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. Now, with a 6-3 conservative majority in the nation’s highest court, reproductive rights advocates are worried that right will be chipped away as anti-abortion politicians push legal boundaries to challenge the decision.

An Arizona bill proposed on the 48th anniversary of the landmark ruling is among the most direct challenges to Roe in nearly half a century: It calls for the decision to be ignored altogether.

Arizona has some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws and has three that criminalize it completely — two would give women receiving abortions and doctors performing them up to 5 years in prison, and the third makes it a misdemeanor to advertise birth control or abortions. Right now, the legal precedent set by Roe v. Wade prevents the state from enforcing those laws. One proposed bill, HB 2650, would allow those who receive abortions and the doctors who administer them to be prosecuted for homicide, including first-degree murder. In Arizona, first-degree murder is punishable by the death penalty.

HB 2650 would also define life as beginning from the moment of conception, revoke state funding for abortion procedures and the clinics that perform them, and stipulate that county attorneys must prosecute homicide by abortion “regardless of any contrary or conflicting federal laws, regulations, treaties, court decisions, or executive orders,” including in cases of rape and incest. Those actions are “blatantly unconstitutional,” said Sara Benesh, an associate professor who specializes in the Supreme Court and civil rights and liberties at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

The supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution deems that the Constitution is above any state or local law and that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the Constitution. The court has consistently upheld that the Constitution protects a fundamental right to privacy, including a woman’s right to choose to end her pregnancy up to the point of viability, meaning the fetus has reached a state in its development where it could survive outside the womb — usually defined as around 24 to 28 weeks...

More, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/arizona-lawmakers-renew-push-to-criminalize-abortions-in-latest-challenge-to-roe-v-wade

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