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For the second time in as many weeks, Arizona Republicans thwarted an attempt to kill a Civil War-era law that is poised to ban nearly all abortions across the battleground state. A Democrat-led bid to wrestle a repeal bill onto the floor of the state House during a Wednesday legislative session was repeatedly swatted down, with four votes failing in a deadlock.
An uproar over the decision by the Arizona Supreme Court last week to uphold the 1864 abortion ban prompted even some GOP figureheads, former President Donald Trump and Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake chief among them, to come out against its implementation. But Arizona lawmakers have held firm, with state Rep. Ben Toma (R), speaker of the narrowly divided House, signaling that he does not support repeal.
“The last thing we should be doing today is rushing a bill through the legislative process to repeal a law that has been enacted and reaffirmed by the Legislature several times,” Toma said after the first vote’s failure. He asked those present in the room “to respect the fact that some of us believe that abortion is in fact the murder of children.”
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