Arizona ruling puts abortion at center of 2024 presidential election

Democrats wasted little time capitalizing on Tuesday's ruling from Arizona's high court upholding a 160-year-old abortion ban, organizing press conferences in swing states across the country and blaming former Republican President Donald Trump for eliminating a nationwide right to abortion. The decision from the conservative Arizona Supreme Court sent a shockwave through the battleground state, which is poised to play a pivotal role in November's presidential election while also hosting one of the country's most high-profile Senate races.

Democrats wasted little time capitalizing on Tuesday's ruling from Arizona's high court upholding a 160-year-old abortion ban, organizing press conferences in swing states across the country and blaming former Republican President Donald Trump for eliminating a nationwide right to abortion.

The decision from the conservative Arizona Supreme Court sent a shockwave through the battleground state, which is poised to play a pivotal role in November's presidential election while also hosting one of the country's most high-profile Senate races. In addition, abortion rights advocates are working to put a ballot measure before voters in November that would enshrine abortion rights protections into the Arizona state constitution. Organizers say they have already gathered more than the number of required signatures to qualify the referendum.

Trump, seeking to distance himself from the ruling, said on Wednesday that the court had gone too far, even while defending the U.S. Supreme Court decision that permitted states to restrict abortion. He called on the state's Republican-controlled legislature and Democratic governor to amend the law. "As you know, it's all about states' rights – that'll be straightened out," he told reporters in Atlanta ahead of a local fundraiser. "And I'm sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason, and that will be taken care of I think very quickly."

In response, Michael Tyler, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said, "Donald Trump owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona." Trump had attempted to neutralize the issue on Monday, saying that abortion rights should be left up to individual states and reiterating his support for exceptions in cases of rape, incest and threats to the mother's life.

A day later, the Arizona Supreme Court threw out the state's 15-week limit in favor of an 1864 law that predates Arizonan statehood. Barrett Marson, a Republican political strategist in Arizona, called the ruling an "earthquake of epic proportions" that would endanger Republicans up and down the ballot in November.

"He said, 'Throw it to the states,'" Marson said. "Well, look what happened." Democrats have made clear their intention to put abortion front and center in November, two years after the Supreme Court – powered by a conservative majority that Trump installed – overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and ruled that abortion was not constitutionally protected.

That decision galvanized Democratic voters and was widely credited with helping the party over-perform in the 2022 congressional midterm election. In addition to news conferences in Arizona cities immediately following the ruling, Democrats held press events in Georgia and Florida to address the issue, while President Joe Biden's campaign put together a three-event swing in another battleground state, North Carolina, focused on reproductive rights. Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Arizona on Friday, the White House said.

The Biden campaign also bumped up its spending in Arizona on a searing advertisement released on Monday, in which a Texas woman tearfully described almost dying after she was denied an abortion following a miscarriage. Across a black screen, the words "Donald Trump did this" flash as her sobs continue in the background. Gunner Ramer, the political director for the anti-Trump Republican Accountability political action committee, said the ruling would bolster Democratic effort to portray Republicans as too extreme.

"This presents a great opportunity for Biden to go on offense against Trump," he said. In a sign of how damaging the issue has become for Republicans, Kari Lake, the Republican frontrunner for the Arizona Senate race, disavowed the law, even though she called the 1864 ban a "great law" during her unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2022.

Her likely Democratic opponent, U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego, called Lake an "extremist" and blamed her and other similar Republicans for the ban.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)