Arizona Republicans team up with Democrats to repeal a law from 1864

If there’s one thing that Democrats can always rely on squeamish Republicans to do, it’s to sign onto bad legislation because GOP lawmakers think it will help moderate their image in an election year.

It’s like Lucy Van Pelt, Charlie Brown and the football: No matter how many times Republicans line up to kick the pigskin of moderation, they’ll have it pulled away from them and get browbeaten with the tag of “extremism.”

When they do, remember the names of Arizona state Sens. Shawnna Bolick and T.J. Shope. In one of the key swing states in November’s presidential election, those two Republicans lined up with state Senate Democrats to pass a repeal of an abortion ban through the GOP-controlled upper chamber, according to The New York Times.

This effectively marks the end of any chance the legislation would survive, since Democrat Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has announced she will sign the bill as soon as it ends up on her desk on Thursday.

The 16-14 vote on Wednesday evening was called “a moment of Arizona history” by Democrat state Sen. Anna Hernandez, who introduced the repeal vote earlier in the day.

The bill abrogated an 1864 law that banned abortion in the state with no exception for rape or incest; three weeks ago, the state Supreme Court ruled 4-2 that the law — passed by the first Arizona Territorial Legislature decades before Arizona became a state in 1912 — could now be enforced since 1) it was still on the books and 2) Roe v. Wade had been overturned.

It’s easy to see why Sens. Bolick and Shope decided to bow to pressure and vote with Democrats to send the repeal to Hobbs’ desk: “The issue has galvanized Democratic voters and energized a campaign to put an abortion-rights ballot measure before Arizona voters in November,” the Times noted.

“On the right, it created a rift between anti-abortion activists who want to keep the law in place and Republican politicians who worry about the political backlash that could be prompted by support of a near-total abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.”

Translation: Don’t get called “extremists” in a state where the presidential and U.S. Senate races will be close.

Bolick, whose husband is on the Supreme Court and voted to uphold the law, tried to have it both ways when she gave a floor speech before casting her vote. She called the law draconian while railing against the anywhere/any time/any reason abortion agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party and Planned Parenthood.

Bolick, the Times reported, delivered a “long, deeply personal speech describing her own three challenging pregnancies, including one that ended with an abortion procedure in her first trimester because the fetus was not viable.”

“Would Arizona’s pre-Roe law have allowed me to have this medical procedure even though my life wasn’t in danger?” she asked, then adding: “We should be pushing for the maximum protection for unborn children that can be sustained … I side with saving more babies’ lives.”

Without being intimately familiar with the medical condition of Sen. Bolick’s unborn child, it’s impossible to say; what she posited was hardly a rhetorical question. And furthermore, it’s not like Democrats or Planned Parenthood won’t still be using this as a cudgel, since the law now defaults to a separate piece of 2022 legislation that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks, again without exceptions for rape and incest.

The same people who are temporarily lionizing Sen. Bolick for being a Good Republican™ for casting her lot with Democrats today are going to be tearing her to bits once the current law exits the books 90 days after the state Legislature adjourns for summer break.

Basically, any restriction has been deemed too extreme by the left, and I can predict with near certainty she’ll soon find her emotional remarks being used callously as an object lesson in “Republican hypocrisy” by an abortion-mad left that views anything short of banning fourth-trimester terminations as an abomination. (And, as we learned in the case of former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, even that isn’t fixed in stone.)

Mind you, we shouldn’t just put all the blame on Sens. Bolick and Shope, however. Even presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump had signaled the 1864 bill should be repealed.

“It’ll be straightened out and as you know, it’s all about states’ rights,” he told reporters April 10, according to The Associated Press.

“It’ll be straightened out, and I’m sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason and that’ll be taken care of, I think, very quickly.”

Again, this is all done under the misapprehension that, if the Republican Party gives an inch on the protection of unborn life, the Democrats will lose some of their rhetorical ammo.

This is never how it happens, however.

In addition to the vote, the Times covered some of the sturm und drang between pro-life and pro-abortion protesters outside of the Arizona State Capitol as the vote was taking place.

After one 16-year-old male protester said that abortion was “murder,” according to the Times, a woman responded thusly: “You’re standing here as a male, but you will never have to make that decision,” she said. “I am totally pro-life, but why can’t we meet in the middle? Government shouldn’t govern our bodies. Government has nothing to do with this.”

She’s “totally pro-life,” but doesn’t believe government should tell any woman to do with her body — or, by extension, the body inside her body. This is the position of the modern Democratic Party, and there is no other acceptable answer. To say otherwise is to be on the “far right,” even though the majority of Americans agree that government needs to be involved with stopping abortion at some point, usually very early in pregnancy.

And, lo and behold, Arizona state House Minority Whip Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, a Democrat, said “we are not finished. We still have an initiative to get on the November ballot that will codify abortion access in our Arizona Constitution.”

Capitulation and retreat will not convince voters that the Democrat line about Republicans being abortion “extremists” is wrong. Instead, it’s time the right started pointing out who the true extremists are: State Rep. Gutierrez and her ilk throughout the country, who seem to believe the only impediment to abortion should be birth.