Is Arizona's abortion ban a return to the 19th century? No, it's actually worse

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William T. Howell, who copied the 1864 law from California, was a progressive by the standards of the state Supreme Court that resurrected his statute.

Arizona’s Supreme Court opened a new front in the war on women’s reproductive rights last week when it resurrected an obscure 1864 law that bans abortion in almost all cases. Critics of the ruling say the court has thrown Arizona back into the 19th century. That isn’t entirely fair to the 19th century. The irony of last week’s reactionary ruling is that the author of the original law, William T. Howell, was a progressive by the standards of his time.

A veteran jurist and former Michigan legislator, Howell got to work on a new code of laws for Arizona. The final document, now known as the Howell Code, ran to nearly 500 pages. One of its primary purposes was to ensure that slavery would never again take root in Arizona. Buried within it was the now-infamous abortion ban. The provision was no outlier. In fact, it was copied from California’s legal code, one of many such laws passed by states and territories in the 1860s and ’70s.

 

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