(LifeSiteNews) — Arizona Republican Senate candidate and prominent MAGA personality Kari Lake has come out against the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a near-total abortion ban dating back to 1864, seemingly validating fears of a shift away from the GOP’s pro-life roots.
On Tuesday, Arizona’s highest court ruled 4-2 that the law, which long predates Roe v. Wade, was legally enforceable now that Roe has been overturned, and that Arizona’s far more recent 15-week abortion ban was not intended to invalidate it. The decision means that abortion is now illegal in the state for any reason except when allegedly “necessary” to save a mother’s life. The ban was codified in 1913, after Arizona became a state. Direct abortion is always gravely immoral and never needed nor ethically justified to save a mother’s life.
Arizona’s Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes have vowed not to enforce any of the state’s abortion restrictions, but their condemnations of the ruling have found some allies across the aisle.
READ: Kari Lake now says she opposes strict abortion ban ahead of Senate race
Lake, who is currently running for the Republican nomination for Arizona’s open U.S. Senate seat held by Independent Kyrsten Sinema, issued a statement the same day calling it “abundantly clear that the pre-statehood law is out of step with Arizonans.” Invoking both former President Donald Trump and her status as “the only woman and mother in this race,” she said she “oppose[d] today’s ruling” and was “calling on Katie Hobbs and the State Legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support. Ultimately, Arizona voters will make the decision on the ballot come November,” referencing a proposed constitutional amendment.
Lake added that if elected she will oppose both federal funding of abortion and federal abortion bans and will instead support increased spending on childcare and protection of embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization.
Her latest statement is a direct reversal from her stance in her unsuccessful bid for governor in 2022, when she declared abortion the “ultimate sin” and said Arizonans “have a great law on the books right now. If that happens, we will be a state where we will not be taking the lives of our unborn anymore.”
.@KariLake in 2022: “Obviously I think Roe should be overturned…we have a great law on the books right now. If that happens, we will be a state where we will not be taking the lives of our unborn anymore.” pic.twitter.com/KtoaGBdiOT
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) April 9, 2024
Lake, a firebrand who closely aligned herself with Trump and against the GOP’s more moderate factions during her rise to popularity, began moderating her abortion stance shortly after announcing her Senate candidacy last fall. The shift brings her into closer alignment with her social liberalism on pro-LGBT “conservatives” and past praise of Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner and “anyone who makes the difficult decision to transition.”
The denunciation comes amid Trump declaring that abortion policy should be relegated to the states and any bans must contain rape, incest, and “health” exceptions, which his defenders have framed as merely a prudential focus on federalism, but politicians like Lake appear to be taking it as license to go further.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) called the Arizona law “absolutely asinine.” Mace has previously condemned heartbeat laws as “not compassionate,” falsely blamed the pro-life cause for Republicans’ underperformance in 2022’s midterm elections, encouraged the Biden administration to simply ignore a court ruling against FDA approval of abortion pills, and urged “strong support” for IVF.
Arizona’s law is absolutely asinine but that’s up to Arizonans to fix.
— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) April 9, 2024
Fourteen states currently ban all or most abortions, with available data so far indicating that now-enforceable pro-life laws could effectively wipe out an estimated 200,000 abortions a year. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrent effects by deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, embedding abortion “rights” in state constitutions.
Such policies, along with Democrat demands to federally codify a “right” to abortion, all but guarantee that the issue will continue to dominate national political conversations whether politicians like it or not.