On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court showed just how difficult it will be to do that. The court resurrected an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, except to save the life of the mother. The law also imposes penalties on abortion providers.
Trump had said let the states handle the issue. The Arizona court showed the full implications of that states’ rights strategy.
The Arizona ruling came in a state that will be especially crucial in deciding the outcome of the presidential election, a state that President Biden won by fewer than 11,000 votes and that Trump’s campaign team has eyed as one of the best opportunities for a pickup. It is likely that a referendum to protect abortion rights will be on Arizona’s ballot in November. The court ruling only heightens the significance of the issue for the rest of the campaign year.
But the court ruling reverberated far beyond Arizona’s borders. The Biden-Harris campaign and other Democrats pounced on the ruling in an effort to further their argument that Trump and Republicans are a threat to freedoms.
All abortion politics are national, not local. Abortion developments — new laws, new restrictions, new stories of women caught up in heart-wrenching and sometimes life-threatening decisions — are no longer confined to the geography where they take place. They are instantly part of the larger debate.
That has been true ever since the Supreme Court, in its 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ended the constitutional right to abortion, which had existed for half a century. That decision, which overturned the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, provided a long-sought victory to abortion opponents, and they have since helped enact highly restrictive laws in states where Republicans control legislatures and the governor’s offices.
Politically, however, Republicans have paid a high price. Time after time, in red states and blue states alike, in both votes to install abortion rights into state constitutions and political campaigns waged around the issue of freedom of choice, Democrats have consistently won, often by significant margins.
The energy of this movement was first seen in Kansas soon after the Dobbs decision, when voters in that Republican stronghold supported keeping abortion rights in the state constitution. It continued through the 2022 midterm elections and after. Abortion rights proponents are working to put referendums on several state ballots beyond Arizona in November. An issue that once was more motivating for abortion opponents has become one of the most energizing issues on the left.
Over the years, Trump has tried to have it all ways on the issue. In a 1999 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said: “I am very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. … I just believe in choice.” By 2011, at a time when he was thinking of running for president and had his eye on the Republican Party, he told the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I am pro-life.”
When he ran for president the first time in 2016, he was asked by Chris Matthews, then of MSNBC, whether there should be punishment for abortion. “There has to be some form of punishment,” he said. “For the woman?” Matthews asked. Trump responded, “Yeah, there has to be some form.”
In that campaign, he vowed to nominate justices to the high court who would vote to get rid of Roe. He made good on that promise and helped install three new members — Neil M. Gorsuch,…
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