Tiana Lowe Doescher from the Washington Examiner foresees challenges for Republicans in Arizona due to the abortion issue

The Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe Doescher reacted to the decision the Arizona Supreme Court made Tuesday regarding abortion access, arguing that it provides a difficult challenge for state Republicans to navigate ahead of the November elections.

The state’s Supreme Court upheld a law from 1864 that bans abortions within the state, with the only exception being in cases when the mother faces immediate life-threatening conditions. Doescher noted how former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is leading President Joe Biden on various matters across multiple battleground states, including Arizona.

“The one area where Biden and Harris have maintained their lead is abortion,” Doescher said on Fox News’s Your World with Neil Cavuto. “And Arizona is not a very red electorate anymore. It has become increasingly purple where some like Florida has become increasingly red.”

Doescher noted how two years ago, the Arizona state legislature passed a prohibition on abortion after 15 weeks, and how this was in “the sweet spot” for Arizona voters. The 1864 law, meanwhile, could be hard to sell to voters ahead of the November elections, with Doescher pointing to how even most Republicans support exceptions to abortion for rape and incest.

The presidential election is not the only election that this 1864 law could affect, as Arizona is also holding a Senate race for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (I-AZ) seat, as she is not seeking reelection. Both the Republican and Democratic candidates in this race, former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), respectively, have spoken out against this law, with Lake asking Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) to come up with an “immediate common sense solution.”

Lake’s stance against this law, Doescher noted, contradicts her previous take on it, when she spoke in favor of it in 2022. It comes as Lake is “not popular in the state at all,” while Gallego has attempted to be a more centrist candidate compared to his fellow Democratic lawmakers.

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“And that’s why she’s come up today, calling on Katie Hobbs to do something about this law to effectively reinstate that Ducey standard of a 15-week abortion ban,” Doscher said. “In other states, it might not matter so much, again, where you have a big margin of support with highly competent governors like Mike DeWine or Ron DeSantis, sure. But Arizona GOP has just been flailing for almost a decade now, and so this can be a live issue if Arizona Republicans don’t get their act together.”

In the wake of the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision, the White House has announced that Vice President Kamala Harris would visit Tucson, Arizona, as part of her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour, which is meant to advocate abortion access on the 2024 campaign trail.