The Arizona Supreme Court will review the state's abortion laws, which puts both the currently enforced 15-week ban and a more restrictive 1864 territorial ban back in play.
A state appeals court previously ruled in December in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Mayes that the 15-week ban that was signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey would take over state law, and Mayes said it's preferable to the alternative.
"The Arizona Court of Appeals made the right decision by ensuring that the territorial-era ban is harmonized with more recent laws regulating abortion. While the 15-week ban is far from an ideal status quo, lacking crucial exceptions for rape or incest, it is much preferable to a law passed during the Civil War, before Arizona was a state, and decades before women gained the right to vote," Mayes said in a statement Wednesday.