US state of Arizona's top court issues near-total ban on abortions

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - Arizona’s supreme court revived an almost total ban on abortions, invoking a dating to 1864, which forbids the procedure except to save a mother’s life and punishes providers with prison time.

The court said in a 4 - 2 ruling that a 2022 law allowing abortions up to 15 weeks of gestation depended on the existence of a federal constitutional right to abortion.

The ruling cannot be enforced for 14 days, judges wrote.

Anyone who administers an abortion could face a mandatory prison sentence of two to five years, according to the 1864 territorial law.

US President Joe Biden said following the decision that millions of Arizonans will soon live under an "even more extreme and dangerous" abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest

"This cruel ban was first enacted in 1864—more than 150 years ago, before Arizona was even a state and well before women had secured the right to vote. This ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom," he said in a statement.

Biden said he would continue to fight to protect reproductive rights and urge Congress to pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v. Wade -- the landmark ruling that enshrined federal abortion protections across the country for half a century -- for women in every state.

US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer separately said Republicans want to ban abortion across the country.

"Democrats will not stop fighting for reproductive rights," he wrote on X, one day after former President Donald Trump said that additional abortion restrictions should be left to individual states.