Also, the Fed eyes a longer period of high rates. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.
The law made abortion a central focus of Arizona’s politics. Ash Ponders for The New York Times
Arizona lawmakers today repealed an abortion ban that first became law in 1864, when Abraham Lincoln was president and a half-century before women won the right to vote.
The repeal narrowly passed the Republican-controlled State Senate with the support of all 14 Democratic senators and two Republicans. Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is widely expected to sign it, after which abortion policy in the state would revert to a 2022 law that restricted the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The 1864 law, which had remained on the books without enforcement for decades, burst into the middle of a heated national political debate three weeks ago when Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled that it should be reinstated because Roe v. Wade had been overturned.
Democrats sought to use the ban to energize voters in Arizona, a battleground state. On the right, the issue created a rift between anti-abortion activists who wanted to keep the law in place and Republicans who worried about the potential backlash of a near-total ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.
In Florida, a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect today, meaning most abortions are now outlawed across the entire Southeast. Here’s a map of how far the ban puts residents of the region from the nearest clinic.
