President Biden condemned a call by Arizona’s Supreme Court docket on Tuesday to uphold an 1864 ban on practically all abortions as “merciless” and “excessive,” saying the regulation was first enacted properly earlier than girls even had the proper to vote.
In a press release launched inside an hour of the choice, Mr. Biden referred to as the ruling an “excessive agenda of Republican elected officers” and promised to proceed the combat for reproductive rights and a restoration of Roe v. Wade, which had protected the proper of girls to have abortions for practically a half century.
“Hundreds of thousands of Arizonans will quickly stay underneath an much more excessive and harmful abortion ban, which fails to guard girls even when their well being is in danger or in tragic instances of rape or incest,” Mr. Biden stated. “This merciless ban was first enacted in 1864 — greater than 150 years in the past, earlier than Arizona was even a state and properly earlier than girls had secured the proper to vote. This ruling is a results of the acute agenda of Republican elected officers who’re dedicated to tearing away girls’s freedom.”
The choice in Arizona, a essential battleground state, comes as Mr. Biden’s marketing campaign and Democratic officers blame the dwindling entry to abortion care in America squarely on former President Donald J. Trump.
The difficulty has been central in a number of current Democratic election victories.
Mr. Trump on Monday launched a video saying that abortion rights must be left to the states. The previous president, whose conservative appointees to the Supreme Court docket helped overturn Roe in 2022, had for months refused to say whether or not he supported restrictive measures on abortion like these outlined within the 160-year-old regulation that Arizona’s highest courtroom stated on Tuesday “is now enforceable.”
The overturning of Roe “paved the way in which for the chaos and confusion we’re seeing play out throughout the nation at this time,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White Home press secretary, instructed reporters on Tuesday.
“There at the moment are 21 excessive state abortion bans in impact throughout the nation,” Ms. Jean-Pierre stated. “One-third of all girls of reproductive age now stay in a state with an abortion ban.”
The White Home additionally stated Vice President Kamala Harris would go to Arizona on Friday to focus on “extremists” within the state who had been pushing for abortion bans.
Throughout a visit there final month, Ms. Harris criticized Mr. Trump’s position within the unfold of state-level abortion restrictions.
“The previous president, Donald Trump, handpicked three members of the US Supreme Court docket as a result of he supposed for them to overturn Roe,” Ms. Harris stated final month. “He supposed for them to take your freedoms, and he brags about it.”
The Arizona regulation bans practically all abortions, a call that would have far-reaching penalties for ladies’s well being care and election-year politics. Docs prosecuted underneath the regulation might face fines and jail phrases of two to 5 years.
Abortion was authorized in Arizona by 15 weeks of being pregnant till Tuesday’s ruling.
Mr. Biden on Tuesday reaffirmed his assist for a federal regulation that may restore abortion rights as soon as protected by Roe v. Wade. However congressional motion on abortion protections is unlikely.
