The Arizona Supreme Court docket grilled attorneys Tuesday over whether or not a pre-statehood ban on almost all abortions has been restricted or made moot by different statutes enacted over the previous 50 years.

The state’s excessive courtroom is reviewing a lower-court resolution that mentioned medical doctors couldn’t be charged for performing the process within the first 15 weeks of being pregnant as a result of different Arizona legal guidelines through the years have allowed them to offer abortions.

The 1864 regulation, which stays on the books, imposes a close to whole ban on abortions, offering no exceptions for rape or incest however permitting them if a mom’s life is at risk.

Almost a yr in the past, the Arizona Court docket of Appeals concluded that medical doctors can’t be prosecuted for performing abortions within the first 15 weeks. But it surely mentioned individuals who aren’t medical doctors would nonetheless be topic to prosecution underneath the outdated regulation.

Attorneys representing Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, the medical director of anti-abortion counseling facilities in metro Phoenix who appealed the choice, had argued the Court docket of Appeals incorrectly concluded that the regulation doesn’t apply to medical doctors. They’re asking the state Supreme Court docket to raise the decrease courtroom’s injunction.

Jacob Warner, an lawyer representing Hazelrigg, mentioned Arizona’s 15-week abortion regulation, which took impact in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade, makes it clear that abortion is just allowed after that time-frame to guard the mom’s life “or to forestall vital reversible bodily impairment.”

Andrew Gaona, an lawyer representing Deliberate Parenthood Arizona, mentioned that in passing legal guidelines regulating abortion over the previous 50 years, Arizona lawmakers didn’t “sign any intent that almost all if not all of those subsequent enactments would change into mere empty shells if Roe v. Wade had been ever to fall.”

A courtroom had blocked enforcement of the 1864 regulation shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court docket issued the 1973 Roe v. Wade resolution guaranteeing a constitutional proper to an abortion. After the Supreme Court docket overturned the choice in June 2022, then-Republican Lawyer Normal Mark Brnovich succeeded in getting a state choose in Tucson to raise the block. Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Lawyer Normal Kris Mayes, has since urged the state’s excessive courtroom to reject Hazelrigg’s enchantment.

This previous summer time, abortion rights advocates started a push to ask Arizona voters to create a constitutional proper to abortion. If proponents accumulate sufficient signatures, Arizona will change into the newest state to place the query of reproductive rights on to voters.