Why Arizona Democrats are fired up over an abortion ballot initiative

Abortion rights advocates scored a major win on Monday when Arizona’s secretary of state announced that organizers had gathered enough signatures to force a vote in November on whether the state constitution should enshrine the right to an abortion.

The Abortion Access for All Act will now appear on the ballot as Proposition 139 and ask voters if Arizona should establish a fundamental right to abortion in its constitution. The proposed amendment comes after Arizona’s Supreme Court earlier this year upheld a ban from 1864, before Arizona was even a state, that criminalized nearly all abortions. But the state’s Legislature ultimately voted in favor of a bill to repeal the harsh ban, and Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, signed it.

At the same time, a law from 2022 that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks — even in cases of rape or incest — that was signed by the previous Republican governor, Doug Ducey, remains on the books. Advocates say that law does not adequately protect the most vulnerable populations.

“It’s young people. It’s older people who have variable cycles because of their age,” Mackenzie Joy Brennan, a pro bono abortion attorney who sits on the board of the Desert Star Institute for Family Planning, the state’s only independent abortion provider, told The Independent last week. Brennan frequently represents teenagers seeking abortions.

Democrats have hoped the abortion ballot initiative would help them win support on the presidential and Senate level and boost voter turnout in November. Indeed, many of the ads for Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego have highlighted Republican Kari Lake’s previous praise of the 1864 abortion ban.

Of course, ever since President Joe Biden, who was notoriously squeamish