“This is going to be fixed in the next week or two. Don’t get upset,” Fox News host Sean Hannity added about Arizona’s ban Wednesday night. “You can. I can almost guarantee it will happen.”
But reality and Republican politics are not that simple. That quickly became evident in Arizona.
State lawmakers immediately called on the Legislature to vote to repeal the strict 1864 abortion law that the state Supreme Court reinstated Tuesday. The law bans nearly all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest, and threatens abortion providers with two to five years in prison.
But Republicans blocked it. In the state Senate, Republicans blocked a motion by Democrats to change the rules that would have allowed them to introduce a repeal bill. In the state Legislature, Republican lawmakers who have criticized the 1864 law pushed for a vote on an existing Democratic proposal to repeal the law. But he was thwarted when leaders called for an adjournment, then a one-week adjournment.
There’s probably some real discussion to be had about how to handle this situation, and there’s time given that the state Supreme Court has put this law on hold for 14 days.
But it’s also clear that repealing or even changing the law in Republican-controlled state legislatures is not as easy as advertised.
For example, state House Speaker Ben Thoma (R) told Axios that he does not support repeal and would not allow it to come to a vote. Both he and state Senate President Warren Petersen filed briefs with the Arizona Supreme Court arguing in favor of the 1864 law.
Thomas will also face other big-name lawmakers who take hard-line anti-abortion positions in July’s congressional primaries, including former Congressman Trent Franks and 2022 Senate candidate Blake Masters. (Mr. Franks has previously picketed abortion clinics. Mr. Masters has said in the past that he supports a national version of Arizona’s 1864 law, and responded to this week’s news: I’m proud to be pro-life and make no apologies for it.”
Thomas’ situation is a microcosm of the Republican Party’s broader dilemma. It is one thing to say that the 1864 law went too far. Figuring out what to do about it is another thing. Are you going to take this issue completely off the books and carry over Arizona’s 15-week ban in 2022? How many weeks do you want the ban to be? Add exceptions for rape and incest, or just remove the threat of prison for health care providers?
As a result, Republicans may effectively give the green light to legalize at least some abortions. Something like this may be difficult to sell to fellow party members who truly believe that abortion is murder and should be treated as such. A Wall Street Journal poll conducted last month found that only one-third of Arizona Republicans said abortion should generally be legal.
In recent years, the Republican Party has been torn between the interests of individual Republicans who appeal to the far right and the interests of the party as a whole. Arizona in particular has been notable for decades as one of the most extreme Republican states. It all looms large here.
There is no clear solution to the situation in Florida either.
In the state, a six-week abortion ban that the state Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to last week was passed by state Republicans and signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last year. The court also gave the green light to a November ballot measure that would enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution, effectively giving voters the power to veto the six-week ban.
Given that Republicans just enacted the ban, it seems unlikely that the state Legislature will change course anytime soon. Nor is it certain that voters will do so for them.
Abortion rights measures have been steadily passed since then; Roe vs. Wade Even among red states, Florida has a higher threshold for passage than most other states, at 60%. This is a threshold that similarly located states such as Michigan (56.7%) and Ohio (56.8%) have failed to meet.
An Emerson College poll released Thursday confirms the difficulties the measure faces. Support for the amendment is 42% to 25%, 17 percentage points ahead of opponents, but with one-third undecided, it is currently far from 60%.
The poll also found that just under six in 10 voters thought a six-week ban would be “too harsh”, at 57%. suggests that reaching 60% may be difficult. (The remainder said the ban was “about right” or “not strict enough.”)
What could happen is a situation where a majority of states vote against the Republican ban, but not enough to actually repeal the ban. Also, some conservative voters who think a six-week ban is too strict may not want to go so far as to enshrine abortion rights fully in state constitutions, and even they may not be comfortable There is also the possibility that policies that were not implemented are still in place.
Trump donned his political strategist hat in a video Wednesday night, saying that while avoiding specifics, he could neutralize the abortion issue currently plaguing the party by focusing on states’ rights. insisted.
“The only problem is [Democrats] They think they’re having abortions,” President Trump said in a social media video. “And all I can say right now is that the state is addressing it. And that issue has been completely resolved.”
