Tuesday’s decision by Arizona’s state supreme court to revive an 1864 ban on abortion perfectly represents the goal of anti-abortion crusaders for decades: It’s an absolute ban with almost no exceptions, would imprison anyone who performs or assists with an abortion, and best of all, is literally from a time when American women weren’t yet treated as fully human citizens with annoying “rights” and all that. Heck, it even predates that pesky 14th Amendment!
But many rightwingers you might expect to be celebrating getting what they said they wanted seem to have instead noticed how deeply unpopular the decision was, and now they’re backpedaling furiously.
The Poster Dipshit for rightwing about-facing is weirdo Arizona Republican jerk Kari Lake. Back in June 2022, during her failed campaign for governor, Lake praised the ancient law in an interview on a conservative podcast. The US Supreme Court had just overturned Roe v. Wade, and Lake was on abortion-bannin’ Cloud Nine, even referencing the archaic law by its statute number:
“I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books — I believe it’s ARS 13-3603. So it will prohibit abortion in Arizona except to save the life of a mother. And I think we’re going to be paving the way and setting course for other states to follow.”
Naturally enough, Lake, who’s now running for the US Senate seat being vacated by fellow weirdo Kyrsten Sinema, was also “incredibly thrilled” by Tuesday’s state supreme court decision, if by “incredibly thrilled” you mean “running away from it like it was a rabid chupacabra.”
Instead of embracing the grand old abortion ban, Lake called the state supreme court ruling “out of step with Arizonans” (Washington Post gift link), because she has clearly seen what way Arizonans are stepping these days.
What’s more, Lake even seemed to acknowledge that she actually lost in 2022, because she called on the state Lege and actual Governor Katie Hobbs to “come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support.”
Two Republicans in Arizona’s congressional delegation, Reps. David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani, also issued statements saying they disagreed with the ruling, calling for the Lege to instead restore a more recent statute banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy instead of after no weeks of pregnancy. Both are from districts Joe Biden won in 2020.
As it happens, the Arizona Legislature actually had the chance yesterday to repeal the 1864 law, because Democrats in the state House introduced a bill to do exactly that, but the Republican leaders didn’t even allow a vote. Instead, they declared a recess until everyone just quiets down and gets mad about some other thing, they’ll find something. Democrats chanted “Shame!” at them, as if any Republicans were capable of such a thing. The Washington Post (gift link) notes that “House Speaker Ben Toma (R) recently told Axios he does not support a repeal and would not permit a vote on it,” so there’s a promise kept. The state Senate also adjourned until next week.
Nationally, Republicans have been every bit as brave as Lake, insisting that exactly what they’ve wanted for 50 years is just too much, my stars. Donald Trump quickly abandoned his claim (from way back on Monday) that he wants the states to make their own decisions on abortion, because for chrissakes, not that way, we’ll get slaughtered. Trump told reporters Wednesday that he thought the Arizona law went too far, but also he’s still proud of his Supreme Court appointees for overturning Roe, and he still loves states’ rights, even when they go too far, because words don’t mean anything:
“Yeah, they did,” Trump said when asked if Arizona went too far. “And that will be straightened out. And as you know, it’s all about states’ rights. That will be straightened out. 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.”
Honestly, we aren’t even certain Trump knows that Arizona’s governor is a Democrat. Or cares.
Over at Fox News, the great victory over abortion was celebrated in the usual way Fox covers stuff that might be bad for Republicans: by barely mentioning it at all. On Fox’s prime-time shows, the Arizona decision might just as well have been a women’s sportsball game in which no trans players participated.
Here is a fun chart from Media Matters, which explained that both CNN and MSNBC gave the story two or more hours of total coverage on Tuesday, over multiple programs all day, while Fox News only gave it 12 minutes — and that was spread out over three shows in its “news” block. Fox’s far more popular primetime “opinion” shows flat out didn’t bring it up at all.
So what did all the Fox hosts talk about Tuesday night instead? They were very very excited about a column at Bari Weiss’s Internet House of Gripes in which an editor at NPR said there’s a lot of liberal bias at the radio network, because wokeness. That was covered by Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity, while the words “Arizona” and “abortion” were not.
Still, the 12 minutes Fox gave the Arizona decision was practically an avalanche of coverage compared to how it ignored February’s state supreme court decision in Alabama that frozen embryos are people. That one only got 6 minutes over the first five days following the decision.
In conclusion, Republicans take abortion very seriously, especially when the issue is likely to bite them in the ass in every election for years and years, the end.
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[WaPo (gift link) / Media Matters / Politifact]
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