It was the period of the Wild West, when white males from again East have been flooding into Arizona to reap the golden bounty of the land, take over territories and set up legal guidelines.
William Howell, a New Yorker tasked with writing the code that will enshrine Arizona as a territory, cracked open the regulation books of a neighboring state as a mannequin: California. He copied over swaths of the state’s authorized textual content — together with a paragraph that criminalized abortions besides when a mom’s life was in danger.
And on Tuesday, 160 years later, Howell’s phrases rose to relevance once more, when Arizona’s Supreme Court docket dominated that the state would return to the unique code on abortion, banning physicians from offering it in all circumstances besides when a mom’s life is in danger.
“Historical past doesn’t occur in a vacuum,” stated Melanie Sturgeon, a retired state archivist and co-founder and president of Arizona Ladies’s Historical past Alliance. “You’ll want to perceive what’s happening … within the territory or state and people subsequent to us, and what’s taking place nationally that impacts us.”
California, with its guarantees of gold, started attracting a rush of tourists from the East within the late 1840s, and shortly coalesced to kind as a state in 1850 — the primary within the West. California’s neighbors to the southeast quickly adopted. In late 1863, Arizona separated from New Mexico to turn out to be its personal fledgling territory.
Over the subsequent yr, Anglo American males traveled from the East to place collectively Arizona’s founding construction. Amongst these key early figures was Howell. Born and raised on a farm in New York, Howell started instructing at 16, grew to become an editor of a newspaper at 19 and by 24 was training regulation, wrote John Goff in his article “William T. Howell and the Howell Code of Arizona.”
Choose William Howell, a New Yorker, wrote the code that will enshrine Arizona as a territory, based mostly on the regulation books of a neighboring state: California.
(Arizona Historic Basis)
Howell was married thrice — remarrying after each his first and second spouse died — and had kids with every of the ladies, based on Goff. He spent a lot of his grownup life in Michigan, transferring up via the ranks of the state Legislature and serving because the speaker professional tem twice earlier than sojourning to Arizona.
“Howell is a moderately shadowy determine, not remembered in Arizona, and largely forgotten in his dwelling state of Michigan,” Goff wrote.
In 1862, then-President Lincoln wrote: “When the Arizona Territory shall be organized, let William T. Howell, of Michigan, be appointed as Choose therein.”
Howell moved to Arizona the next yr and shortly arrange courtroom in Tucson. Amid the Civil Warfare racking the nation, Howell delivered a speech to an assembled grand jury that “dwelt at size on the necessity for the safety of the rights of the individuals by granting equal justice for all,” Goff wrote.
As one among his first duties as affiliate justice in Arizona, Howell “sifted via the statute books of California, New York and different states for legal guidelines appropriate for the territory,” based on the 1970 e book “Arizona Territory, 1863-1912; A political historical past” by Jay Wagoner.
“Arizona mainly … copied California regulation,” Sturgeon stated.
In California’s legal guidelines, Howell discovered and included — nearly word-for-word — its provision on abortion. The paragraph is tucked into a bit of Arizona code about punishment for poisoning one other individual:
“And each one who shall administer or trigger to be administered or taken, any medicinal substances, or shall use or trigger for use any devices no matter, with the intention to obtain the miscarriage of any lady then being with youngster, and shall be thereof duly convicted, shall be punished,” each the California and Arizona codes state, including {that a} doctor can be excepted from the regulation “who within the discharge of his skilled duties deems it mandatory to provide the miscarriage of any lady so as to save her life.”
Howell earned a complete of $7,500 for his work on the job, and the honorific of Arizona’s founding doc being named “the Howell Code,” based on Wagoner’s e book.
“A part of the rationale that I feel that that turns into part of the regulation within the West is to ensure that white ladies are usually not having abortions,” Sturgeon stated. “I don’t assume they care very a lot if Mexicans and Native People had abortions, however they have been very involved.”
The start fee had been in decline because the starting of the nineteenth century, Sturgeon stated, as industrialization moved individuals off farms and into cities, lessening the necessity for as many kids to assist their households.
Whereas trendy abortion legal guidelines fluctuate from state to state — some together with exceptions for rape or incest — Arizona’s unique code was strict. That was pretty typical for the time as a result of, Sturgeon famous, the age of consent in Arizona was 10.
“It was simply assumed that for those who acquired pregnant as a 10-year-old, that you simply had seduced that uncle, that next-door neighbor, that older brother or no matter,” she stated. “And so there’s nothing in our legal guidelines about rape or incest.”
Sturgeon stated she has learn courtroom transcripts of judges and juries interrogating kids about their position in attracting an older man.
“There’s a poor youngster who carries a child to time period … that has all this trauma of being molested and impregnated by a relative or a household good friend, and so they must reside with that for the remainder of their life,” she stated, “as a result of it was simply assumed that they have been those to seduce somebody.”
Not lengthy after Arizona’s code was established, commercials for self-administered abortions began popping up in newspapers, Sturgeon stated. The commercials used the identical time period because the Arizona code — “medicinal substances” — to sign abortions.
“Anytime you noticed an commercial that stated ‘Portuguese treatment,’ that was a euphemism for ‘This can produce an abortion,’” she stated.
Howell’s keep in Arizona didn’t final lengthy. As Goff writes, Howell acquired phrase that his third spouse had additionally fallen ailing in Michigan, “and may not reside till the choose acquired dwelling.” Howell took a go away of absence from his work in Arizona to return to his dying spouse’s aspect.
He doubtless by no means returned West.
