On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled to uphold an 1864 law – written before Arizona was granted statehood in 1912 – which essentially bans all abortion, allowing exceptions for threats to the mother’s life, but not for rape or incest.

“I just think it was a really dark day in our history that the Supreme Court ruled the way that they did,” Arizona State Sen. Anna Hernandez said.

On Wednesday, chaos ensued as House Democrats tried to open discussion on an appeal and Republicans blocked it, though not everyone in the party is supporting the ruling.

The Guardian published an Instagram post highlighting contradictory statements Arizona politicians have made, including Rep. Juan Ciscomani who applauded the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, but called for action against the latest ban.

“Today’s ruling is a disaster for women and providers… We must do better for women and I call on our policymakers to immediately address this,” he said.

Following a trend of Republicans saying that the party needs to back off enforcing abortion restrictions, NBC reports Trump said Arizona’s law “went too far,” and that he would not sign a nationwide abortion ban if he were elected, according to the Associated Press.

Phoenix-based civil rights lawyer and constitutional law expert Robert McWhirter told Reckon that it’s very rare for pre-statehood laws to be reinstated, but recent actions by legislators led to this.

“The more recent law specifically had a provision that affirmed this older law, so it wasn’t ever meant to be superseded and that was by design by the legislators who did that,” he said.

In March 2022, Arizona enacted a 15-week abortion ban as the U.S. Supreme Court litigated the future of Roe v. Wade, in anticipation that it would be overturned.

“What they had with the overturning of Roe vs. Wade was a catastrophic success,” said McWhirter.

Hernandez also pointed out that this 15-week ban specifically has language that does not repeal the 1864 law, calling out her Republican peers who voted in favor of the ban in 2022, but are backpedaling now.

“I want everybody that’s watching what’s happening in Arizona to know that this was always the plan. The plan was always to have a full out abortion ban in Arizona, because the language existed in that bill in 2022,” she said.

Confusion surrounds when this ban will go into effect. As the Arizona Republic reports, the court stayed enforcement for 14 days.  By some accounts, an Oct. 2022 order prevents the law from being enforced until 45 days after the state’s Supreme Court issues a mandate. Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes told KJZZ there could be a 45 to 60 day period before it goes into effect.

Doctors will soon be operating in a gray area, though it’s unclear when

The future of how long physicians are free to provide care is unclear. While Mayes said she will not prosecute doctors who perform abortions or people who have them, that does not prevent county attorneys from pursuing charges.

“But there are other county attorneys out there. We don’t know exactly what they’re going to try to do. I’ve said I’m going to do everything I can under my supervisory authority over them to prevent them from prosecuting doctors and health care professionals,” Mayes told KJZZ on Wednesday.

McWhirter also pointed out that Arizona has a 7-year statute of limitation for most criminal charges.

“That means anytime within the next seven years, a different attorney general could come in and start prosecuting. There also was still an open question whether county attorneys have the power to prosecute these crimes. The governor wrote an executive order stating that they don’t, but that could be challenged in court as well,” he said.

Without a clear indication of what to expect, there’s concern for healthcare professionals who might be working in gray areas.

“You are now having physicians who are scared to do their job, that they did without batting an eye before the overturn of Roe,” Dr. Atsuko Koyama, physician at Camelback Family Planning told CBS.

Reckon reached out to the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Arizona and received this comment from Banner Health, which operates medical systems.

“We are assessing the impact of the Arizona Supreme Court decision on our providers and patients.”

Hernandez said that the law also posed a threat to physicians’ ability to provide in the future.

“At the end of the day, a lot of the medical providers are going to do their job based on the context of the law,” said Hernandez. “Even if they’re not gonna face prosecution, the reality is that they are still in jeopardy of losing their license.”

Camelback Family Planning in Phoenix performs about one-fourth of abortions in the state, according to CBS, and hopes to continue service while the legalities are sorted out.

“Our plan is to stay open as long as possible,” Ashleigh Feiring, a nurse who works at Camelback told CBS. “Our clinic has been shut down twice in the last four years, but we’ve always resumed service.”

Abortion funds will remain in operation but need your help

Hannah Taleb has been a collective member of the Tucson Abortion Support Collective (TASC) for about seven years. She said that in times like this, the work TASC does becomes even more imperative, something they learned when the Dobbs decision came down in 2022.

“Clinics shut down the next day. We had clients who had appointments that were canceled and not honored. It became very clear to us, I was like there’s no way that we shut down, we have to help these people get to their abortions, and we did that,” she said.

TASC provides information on cost and where to access care, guiding people towards abortion next steps. Taleb told Reckon that TASC has not received a large influx of calls regarding out-of-state travel yet, because abortion is still available in Arizona.

“We and other groups have really been vocal about if you have an appointment, keep it. That’s really imperative because you can still have that appointment and almost everywhere saying that they will stay open for the 45 day stay period,” she said.

With the uncertainty surrounding the 1864 law, TASC is working closely with partner clinics and waiting to see how they move.

“If we learned anything from 2022, it’s just that different organizations are going to take their different levels of risk, and we just have to keep ourselves abreast of what’s going on,” she said.

Funding is essential to the work TASC and other abortion funds like the Yuma Abortion Fund and Indigenous Women Rising do. Taleb says the best way to support their efforts is to donate to local funds.

“There are so many places you can give money to and just know that all of these groups, we are going to be committed to getting people abortions no matter what happens in 45 days,” she said. “Abortion finds a way and we’re going to help people figure it out.”

Arizonans were already working on getting abortion constitutionally protected. On April 2, the Arizona Mirror reported that the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign gathered over 500,000 signatures, more than the 383,923 required to qualify for the November ballot. Hernandez said this is essential to ensure people’s rights remain intact.

“I want to make sure that people understand that anything that is not protected and  codified by right in the constitution of Arizona is not protected,” said Hernandez. “So until we get that ballot measure across the finish line in November, our rights are going to continue to be under attack.”