New York – A female judge of theArizona reintroduced an anti-abortion law that dates back to a time when there were still no kerosene lights on the street and Arizona was not yet a state: the almost total ban on abortion, envisaged by an old woman law of 1864, and which now becomes current. It prohibits almost any type of intervention, even in cases of rape, incest and malformation, and criminalizes anyone, doctors and assistants, who will help a woman to have an abortion, to the point that she risks a sentence of two to five years in prison. The decision was made by a judge in Pima County, of which Tucson is a member, who granted the request presented by the state attorney general: Mark Brnovich had asked in August to remove the block imposed in 1973 on the text almost 160 years ago, after the ruling of the Supreme Court which revoked the right, established by the Roe v. Wade. The judge Kellie Johnson sided with the state of Arizona and established that the law, written in 186, officially authorized in 1901 and confirmed in 1977, can no longer be blocked, making it effective immediately: now all types of abortion except in cases where the woman’s life is at risk, even if not much more is said.
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by our correspondent Anna Lombardi
Arizona officially takes a step backwards like other conservative states that have chosen the fundamentalist line, such as Florida led by Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas led by Greg Abbottwhich reintroduced a 1925 law. In Arizona, however, a legal battle ensued: Planned Parenthood, the American nonprofit organization that fights for abortion legislation and access to medical care, has asked that the old law be replaced “at least” by the one approved at the beginning of the year and which provides for a ban on termination of pregnancy after the fifteenth week. The judge’s decision sparked opposite reactions: Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, a Christian lobby, called the sentence the “triumph of the right to life.” The same attorney general, Brnovictweeted: “I will continue to protect the most defenseless Arizona people.”
But local radio and TV have received protests. A woman, Mandy Johnson, same surname as the judge but no relationship, called an Arizona TV, Abc15, to tell her story about her: she was raped as a young man, she got pregnant but she decided to have an abortion. “If I had to bring the pregnancy to term she-she admitted-today I would not be alive, I would have ended it”. For the top management of Planned, which runs four of nine abortion clinics in the state, the judge’s decision ended up bypassing a series of court rulings that “clearly allowed abortion to be terminated” in Arizona. “In practice – commented the president, Brittany Fonteno – it was decided to bring people back one hundred and fifty years. No archaic law should decide our reproductive freedom and how we want to live in today’s times ”. “We know – she added – that the vast majority of people are with us”. A survey conducted earlier this year found that 90 percent of Arizona residents agree that abortion is an issue that policy should steer clear of, while 80 percent strongly oppose it. to a law that criminalizes doctors who help women have abortions.