Arizona’s highest court on Tuesday upheld an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, a decision that could have far-reaching consequences for women’s health care and election-year politics in a critical battleground state.

“Physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal,” the court said in a 4-2 decision.

But the court, whose justices are all Republican appointees, also put its ruling on hold for the moment and sent the matter back to a lower court for additional arguments about the law’s constitutionality. Abortion providers said they expected to continue performing abortions in May as their lawyers and Democrats searched for additional tactics to delay the ruling.

The ruling immediately set off a political earthquake. Democrats condemned it as a “stain” on Arizona that would put women’s lives at risk. Several Republicans, sensing political peril, also criticised the ruling and called for the Republican-controlled legislature to repeal it.

The decision from the Arizona Supreme Court concerned a law that was on the books long before Arizona achieved statehood. It outlaws abortion from the moment of conception, except when necessary to save the life of the mother, and it makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Doctors prosecuted under the law could face fines and prison terms of two to five years.

Planned Parenthood Arizona, the plaintiff, and other abortion-rights supporters argued that the 1864 ban, which had sat dormant for decades, had essentially been overtaken by years of subsequent Arizona laws regulating and limiting abortion — primarily, a 2022 law banning abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy.

But the territorial-era ban was never repealed. The Arizona Supreme Court said Arizona’s legislature had not created a right to abortion when it passed the 15-week ban. Because the federal right to abortion in Roe v. Wade had now been overturned, nothing in federal or state law prevented Arizona from enforcing the near-total ban, the court wrote.

The court’s ruling was a stinging loss for abortion-rights supporters, who said it would put doctors in legal jeopardy and prompt clinics in Arizona to stop providing abortions.

Dr Atsuko Koyama, an abortion provider in Phoenix, said she had recently provided abortions to one woman trying to flee an abusive partner and another whose pregnancy had endangered her health. She said that the court’s ruling would end that kind of care.

New York Times News Service