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What to know about the 1864 abortion ban Arizona's Supreme Court says is 'now enforceable'

The legal code it comes from also outlaws interracial marriage and forbids minorities from testifying against white people in court.

Peter Zillmann (HPZ)/Wikimedia Commons, Brandon Friedman/Twitter

Arizona's borders may soon be even more consequential.

When the 2022 Dobbs decision overturned the federal protection of medical privacy in reproductive decisions, leaving abortion law up to the states, experts warned of the legal and medical consequences to come: People in states with old laws on the books would find themselves facing abortion restrictions the likes of which had not been seen in over 50 years since Roe vs. Wade became "settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court," and medical providers would face legal conundrums that threatened patient care.

Nearly two years later, we've seen the fallout on multiple fronts, from women suing states for denying them medically necessary care to children who have been raped and impregnated being forced to travel across state lines to get an abortion.

And the latest development has Arizona set to enact a near-total abortion ban based on a 1864 legal code, after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the law "it is now enforceable."

Here's what to know about the 160-year-old law:

There is only one abortion exception allowed for in the law—to save the life of the mother. As medical providers have made clear, that kind of exception is a murky gray area that leads to impossible questions like "How imminent does a mother's death need to be?" for a doctor to take action without fearing legal repercussions.

Civil War-era historian Heather Cox Richardson shared some of the details about how the law came about and the context in which it was written on Facebook, and the historical facts paint a picture of how utterly absurd it is for the law to go into effect in 2024.

"In 1864, Arizona was not a state, women and minorities could not vote, and doctors were still sewing up wounds with horsehair and storing their unwashed medical instruments in velvet-lined cases," wrote Richardson. She pointed out that the U.S. was in the midst of the Civil War, and that the law didn't actually have much to do with women and reproductive care.

"The laws for Arizona Territory, chaotic and still at war in 1864, appear to reflect the need to rein in a lawless population of men," she explained, sharing that the word "miscarriage" was used in the criminal code to describe various forms of harm against another person, specifying dueling with, maiming and poisoning other people.

Richardson offered that detail as the context in which the law states that "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."

How did the law even come about? At that time, the newly formed Arizona Territorial Legislature was composed of 27 men. The first thing they did was authorize the governor to appoint a commissioner to draft a code of laws, but a judge named William T. Howell had already written one up. After some discussion, the legislators enacted Howell's laws, known as "The Howell Code."

The code included laws like, "No black or mulatto, or Indian, Mongolian, or Asiatic, shall be permitted to give evidence in favor of or against any white person," as well as "All marriages of white persons with negroes or mulattoes are declared to be illegal and void."

Richardson also pointed out that the code set the age of consent for sexual intercourse at 10-years-old.

Essentially, a law written by one man, 48 years before Arizona was officially a state, over half a century before women were allowed to vote, when it was perfectly legal to enact and enforce racist laws and see 10-year-olds as old enough to consent to sex, is now considered "enforceable" by the Arizona Supreme Court.

As Richardson pointed out, the difference now is that women can vote. And Americans have proven time and again that draconian abortion laws are wildly unpopular across the political spectrum. Even some Republican lawmakers and politicians are flip-flopping on previous praise for the 1864 law, saying that the Arizona legislature needs to do something about the law to prevent it from taking effect.

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AriZona Iced Tea co-founder refuses to raise price above 99 cents, inflation be damned

The price has held steady since 1992 and Don Vultaggio is determined to keep it that way.

Arizona Iced Tea/Twitter

The price of AriZona Iced Tea hasn't changed in 30 years.

In 1992, a new canned iced tea brand arrived in convenience stores throughout the U.S. The large, Southwest-themed can of AriZona iced tea would set you back $0.99, nearly the cost of a gallon of gas.

I was in high school in 1992. I now have adult children, gas prices are more than quadruple what they were back then and that same can of iced tea costs … $0.99.

The folks at AriZona Iced Tea haven't changed their recommended selling price in 30 years, through various periods of inflation, economic upheaval and a global pandemic. Even now, as COVID-19 and war in Europe is squeezing inflation to uncomfortable places, as even the cost of the aluminum to make the cans is going up, AriZona is refusing to budge on its base price.

Unlike many popular drink brands that are owned by large parent companies such as Coca-Cola or PepsiCo, AriZona is privately owned. That gives the people in charge the ability to make radical financial choices like this.

"I’m committed to that 99-cent price," AriZona co-founder and chairman Don Vultaggio told the Los Angeles Times. "When things go against you, you tighten your belt.

"I don't want to do what the bread guys and the gas guys and everybody else are doing," he added. "Consumers don't need another price increase from a guy like me."

"A guy like me," to be clear, is a company founder worth $4.3 billion who sells around three billion cans of tea per year. So yeah, he really doesn't need to pinch the average American to maximize his profits at this point. However, "don't need to make more money" isn't often a real-world reason for businesses to not try to make as much as they possibly can, regardless of how it impacts consumers.

Of course, most of us don't expect prices to remain steady forever. We expect incremental price increases over time, and don't generally mind as long as we don't feel any drastic changes. But it's definitely refreshing to see businesses that insist on keeping prices low, especially when so many take advantage of inflation news to gouge people unnecessarily.

Take Costco, for instance. You can buy a ginormous hot dog, top it with all the ketchup, mustard, relish and onions your heart desires, and wash it down with a 24-oz soda for a ridiculous $1.50. The meal combo has been the same price since 1985, which resulted in an absolutely epic (and also totally true) tale of Costco founder Jim Sinegal telling Costco CEO Craig Jelinek, "‘If you raise the [price of the] effing hot dog, I will kill you." Rather than raise the price, Costco created its own hot dog manufacturing plant.

AriZona isn't just sitting back and taking the hit, though. One way it's cutting costs is by narrowing the can at the top to use less aluminum, the price of which has gone up due to tariffs in addition to overall inflation.

“If you keep doing those things, you can kind of offset costs and rising costs, and get the consumer value and the ability to buy your product and everybody’s happy,” Vultaggio explained to TODAY.

"Everything (people are) buying today there’s a price increase on," he said. "We’re trying to hold the ground and hold for a consumer who is pinched on all fronts. I’ve been in business a long time and candidly I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on now."

In a world that's experienced so much change and upheaval in recent years, it's nice to know that at least one thing is holding steady—even if it is just a can of iced tea.

(Also nice to now they have a sense of humor about it. Check out their April Fool's Day tweet with their 9 cent mini-can.)

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600,000 kids could've missed a meal with schools closed. But these teachers had a plan.

Arizona provides less funding for schools than it did in 2008 and is ranked 49th in the country for teacher salary.

After months of rising tensions with state lawmakers over low pay and low funding, teachers walked out of schools April 26, 2018. In the second week of the strike, educators weren't backing down and planned to head to the state capitol to continue arguing for higher funding.

But even in the middle of a protest, teachers had their students' needs in mind.

Photo by Andrew Millett Photography.

"My friends and family believe in properly funding our public schools and making sure kids are affected by the walkout as little as possible," said Rodi Vehr, a first-grade teacher at Longview Elementary in Phoenix.

As teachers were preparing for the strike, they were making plans to help their students, too.

Thousands of city leaders and community members across Arizona were opening their doors to provide free or low-cost child care and meal services for the nearly 850,000 students whose schools were closed due to a statewide educator walkout.

Community members throughout the state worked together to plan meals for the 600,000 students who rely on free or reduced-price school meals. According to Vehr, her friends and family pooled their resources to buy and prepare $1,000 worth of meals for students to take home.

"They [legislators] keep saying that children should never be hungry, and we want to help make sure they aren't," Vehr says.

Elaine Glassman and Abbey Johnson crowdfunded money to provide 90 students with meals. Photo courtesy Elaine Glassman.

Elaine Glassman, a first-grade teacher in the Deer Valley Unified School District, put out a call for food donations on social media and was able to prepare meals for 90 students in the district. Glassman works in a Title I School, a federal designation for schools with a high number of students that come from low-income families.

"Sometimes they don’t even have dinner," Glassman says. "They’ll have breakfast and lunch at school, and then not eat until breakfast the next day."

After the first week of schools closures, her school announced it would open its cafeteria from 11 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. to serve students throughout the duration of the walkout. After it became clear the walkout would extend to at least a second week, most of the state’s 1,794 Title I schools arranged for meals to be available to their students as well.

In addition to meals, community organizations are finding ways to provide child care services to keep kids engaged and safe during school hours.

Photo courtesy YMCA Valley of the Sun, used with permission.

Peyton Tune, the chief operating officer for the YMCA Valley of the Sun, announced that its facilities would extend their daycare hours and reduce their prices until the end of the walkout.

"Nobody will be turned away based on an inability to pay," Tune says.

Photo courtesy YMCA Valley of the Sun, used with permission.

Arizona is far from alone in the ongoing battle for education funding.

Teachers in West Virginia were the first to strike this year, and their success — a 5% raise for all teachers in the state — inspired educators in Oklahoma (which secured a funding raise, too) Colorado, and Arizona to follow suit. The recent strikes are emblematic of America's larger issues with how it funds schools and how students and teachers lose when that funding isn't enough.

While they’ve expressed how much they miss teaching and working with their students, Glassman and Vehr say they’re committed to walk out of their schools and proudly wear their #RedForEd until their schools receive funding.

Until that happens, they have one message for students, families, and fellow educators: Stay strong.

Photo by Jeisenia Estrada.

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The Confederacy lost. This activist delivered their second-place trophy.

'That's my plan, to continue to go forward, being a person who stands up for what's right.'

Lifelong Arizona resident Rebecca Olsen McHood has had enough of her state's Confederate monuments and the bigotry they represent. So she did something about it.

In the wake of recent violent demonstrations over the monuments in other states, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis but refuses to remove Confederate monuments from public lands despite the fact that Arizona became a state 47 years after the Civil War.

"It’s important that people know our history," he told the press Aug. 14. "I don’t think we should try to hide our history."

McHood was outraged by President Donald Trump's Aug. 15 remarks about the violence in Charlottesville and Ducey's apathy. But she didn't let her anger paralyze her.

"When our president is coming out in support of Nazis and in support of white supremacists and when our local government is advancing these racist policies, this is a good time to say, 'Hold up here. What do you really stand for,'" she says.

Donald Trump photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images. Gov. Doug Ducey photo by Maury Phillips/Getty Images for Leigh Steinberg.

Together with her friend Cynthia Lehigh, McHood turned one of Arizona's monuments into a larger-than-life participation trophy.

McHood crafted two paper banners that wouldn't look out of place at a child's birthday party, then Lehigh joined her for a trip from their homes in Gilbert, Arizona, to the state capital grounds in Phoenix on the evening of Aug. 15. Given all of the recent controversy and violent demonstrations to protect Confederate monuments, she worried she'd have to deal with crowds.

Instead, the structure was guarded by a single police officer, who watched as Lehigh and McHood started to tie their banners, which read "You lost, get over it," and "2nd place participant" to the structure, a humorous take on the popular participation trophy meme.

Photo by Cynthia Lehigh, used with permission.

The police officer asked the pair not to attach anything, so they set them down and took pictures, before heading over to a nearby rally in support of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).

"I wondered if the officer would grab all the stuff and throw it in the trash," she says. "He left it there, and it was still there when we left."

Photo by Rebecca Olsen McHood, used with permission.

While McHood is not the first activist to target a Confederate monument, some may be surprised to learn she is white and a lifelong Republican.

However, McHood did not support Trump and is appalled by the bigotry and vitriol she's seeing as a result of his election. She thought about changing her party after the election but decided to stick it out after meeting some fellow Republicans while collecting signatures this summer in support of the state's public school system.

"Having been out and talking to those people and gathering those signatures, I know that there are good people in the Republican Party ... who care about equality, who care about education, who care about fiscal responsibility, who care that their neighbors have food to eat, and who care about social safety nets," she says.

Photo via Rebecca Olsen McHood.

As a white woman and Republican, McHood knows she has access other people may not, so she makes an effort to use her privilege for good.

McHood says she tries to use her access and position of relative safety to lift up voices that often go unheard.

"I know that I as a white, former Mormon, smiley, confident person, I just automatically have better access to government leaders and I have more safety than they have," she says. "Often, leaders will set meetings with me, and I will bring my friends who are in black- and brown-skinned bodies with me ... and I will pass the mic."

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Because we are all responsible for dismantling white supremacy.

This is not a left or right issue. White supremacy and white nationalism are poisons that infect and take hold in our communities, governments, and systems. Breaking that down, examining our bitter history, and making it right will take all of us, regardless of our identities or where we fall on the political spectrum.

It's a monumental task, but we're the ones we've been waiting for.

Photo by Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images.

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