Until 1871, a wife who divorced a husband for adultery faced the prospect of a court-appointed trustee to oversee the property or alimony she received.

But if a wife was found to have committed adultery, she lost all her property to her husband, forever. The 1871 Married Woman’s Property Act granted women more autonomy, but marriage remained an unequal partnership.

By around 1870, women’s suffragists began advocating for Arizona to follow Wyoming, Colorado and Utah in giving women the right to vote. This was 50 years before the 19th Amendment gave the right to vote to all women in the U.S.

Led by female attorney Murat Masterson, suffragists introduced a bill to enfranchise women in 1883. It failed. White women were allowed to cast ballots in county school board elections, but it took determined activism by women’s rights activists to achieve even this vote.

Suffragists led by Pauline O’Neill, Frances Willard Munds and others continued to push for the right for women to vote through organized clubs and staged rallies – and worked to sway pubic opinion.

Women’s health doctor Boido was also active in the women’s suffrage fight in Arizona by promoting sex education, as well as anti-death penalty, anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco efforts.

In 1913, one year after Arizona became a state, women finally got the right to vote.

Some women like Juhl did indeed violate Arizona’s abortion ban, based on historical evidence of physicians charging a high fee.

After Boido’s arrest and arraignment, she remained in jail for three months, including during her trial. The jury “found her guilty of performing an illegal operation,” according to the Arizona Republican newspaper.

Historian Mary S. Melcher has argued that Boido did not have a jury of her peers since women were not allowed on them.

Juhl returned to her family in Yavapai County and went back to high school.

After her conviction in 1918, Boido became prisoner 5159 at the women’s wing of the state penitentiary. She served two months, then was paroled because the women’s section of the prison was too hot and unlivable in the Arizona summer. With Boido’s medical license gone, she moved to California. She died in Hawaii in 1959 at age 89.

Arizona kept this 1864 abortion ban in place until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Roe v. Wade in 1973, that the right to get an abortion was constitutionally guaranteed. The court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, sparking a series of events that have led to the resurrection of the 1864 Arizona abortion ban.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Calvin Schermerhorn, Arizona State University

Read more:
Other states, like Arizona, could resurrect laws on abortion, LGBTQ+ issues and more that have been lying dormant for more than 100 years

Supreme Court blunts voting rights in Arizona – and potentially nationwide – in controversial ruling

Supreme Court’s selective reading of US history ignored 19th-century women’s support for ‘voluntary motherhood’

Calvin Schermerhorn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.