The vote in favor of three Republican legislators in the Arizona House of Representatives allowed Democrats to pass a bill to repeal the Abortion Law of 1864 that the State Supreme Court upheld a few weeks ago. The law now goes to the Senate, where the conservatives have a narrow majority, but which gave the green light a few days ago to a similar motion thanks to the vote of two senators from the state GOP.
The House has already refused up to three bills so far to repeal the law, but growing pressure, even from within his own party -also on the part of Donald Trump-, led legislators Matt Gress, Tim Dunn and Justin Wilmeth to add their vote to the 29 Democrats to move the initiative forward. Gress tried to justify his vote while declaring himself "pro-life," highlighting that the ancient norm "It is unworkable and out of line with the values of Arizonans." According to him, his position allows him to dismantle "the false notion promoted by the extremes on both sides of this issue that we cannot respect and protect women and defend new life at the same time," so he urged the senators to move it forward quickly.
My statement on today’s abortion vote. pic.twitter.com/MUEhzNfZvM
— Matt Gress (@MatthewGress) April 24, 2024
"An awful and disgusting situation"
The turnaround by these three legislators sparked a tense discussion during the vote, with speaker Ben Toma lamenting that the vote was a mistake because it had been rushed. Harsher was speaker pro tempore Travis Grantham, who accused Democrats of playing dirty and taking advantage of this "awful and disgusting situation" as a political weapon: "To see how this has been turned against one party and used as a weaponization of the issue is disgusting," he said. Following the session, Grantham removed Gress, as well as Democratic Deputy Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos, from their committee assignments.
Quite the opposite of Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary, who celebrated the vote by pointing out that "we're moving forward in the right direction."
