A Law That Is Unchangeable
"In 1971, Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson, Inc. sued the Attorney General challenging the constitutionality of Arizona's abortion statutes under both the state and federal constitutions," said the court. In the case of Nelson v. Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson, a "trial court ruled Arizona's abortion statutes unconstitutional," but "the court of appeals reversed the trial court's ruling, upholding the constitutionality of the abortion statutes."
But, in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court issued Roe, and the Arizona Court of Appeals held the state's abortion ban "unconstitutional because of Roe."
Did the Arizona state legislature back down in the face of these court decisions? No.
"To the contrary," the Arizona Supreme Court said in its recent decision, "four years after Roe and Nelson, the legislature recodified [the abortion ban], maintaining the operative language of the statute."
This 1977 recodification of Arizona's abortion ban, as cited by the state's Supreme Court, stated the following: "A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years."
Why did Arizona lawmakers in 1977 take the same stance on abortion their predecessors had in 1864? Because their position was based on an unchanging principle -- that is as old as mankind.
The Ten Commandments say: "You shall not kill."
As this column has noted before, Thomas Jefferson -- who in the Declaration of Independence cited the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and said all men "are endowed by their Creator" with a right to life -- would later write that Cicero was one of the inspirations for this declaration.
"[I]t was intended to be an expression of the American mind," Jefferson said.
"All its authority rests on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc."
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