Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Arizona's Abortion Ruling Turns Election Year Upside Down
Democrats seized on a ruling on Tuesday by Arizona鈥檚 highest court upholding an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, setting up a fierce political fight over the issue that is likely to dominate the presidential election and a pivotal Senate race in a crucial battleground state. Even though the court put its ruling on hold for now, President Biden and his campaign moved quickly to blame former President Donald J. Trump for the loss of abortion rights, noting that he has taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned a constitutional right to abortion. Just a day earlier, Mr. Trump had sought to defang what has become a toxic issue for Republicans by saying that abortion restrictions should be decided by the states and their voters. (Lerer, Nehamas and Epstein, 4/9)
It took little more than a day for Donald Trump鈥檚 political gambit on abortion to come undone. On Monday, the former president declined to support any new national law setting limits on abortions. Going against the views of many abortion opponents in his Republican Party, Trump was looking for a way to neutralize or at least muddy a galvanizing issue that has fueled Democratic victories for nearly two years. He hoped to keep it mostly out of the conversation ahead of the November elections. On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court showed just how difficult it will be to do that. The court resurrected an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, except to save the life of the mother. The law also imposes penalties on abortion providers. (Balz, 4/9)
One day after former President Donald Trump backed away from a national abortion ban, an Arizona Supreme Court ruling criminalizing abortion in the state highlighted a growing GOP divide on the issue, with a trio of prominent Arizona Republicans blasting the decision. Senate candidate Kari Lake, a Trump ally who defended Trump鈥檚 false claims he won the 2020 election, and Rep. Juan Ciscomani, a rising star in the House Republican Conference, criticized the Arizona Supreme Court鈥檚 decision Tuesday enforcing an 1864 law eliminating all abortions in the state except in the case of saving the life of the pregnant person. Rep. David Schweikert, too, weighed in against the decision. (Cohen and Altimari, 4/9)
President Donald Trump鈥檚 announcement that abortion should be left to the states sent many in the congressional GOP scrambling. But three senators in particular could feel the squeeze in the coming months. Some lawmakers are trying a new strategy. Take Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), whose wife just argued an abortion case before the Supreme Court. He aligned with Trump and said Republicans should 鈥渕ake the case anew鈥 to voters to ban abortion at the state level 鈥 though that argument hasn鈥檛 seemed to work much so far. (Tully-McManus, 4/9)
Former President Donald Trump said he wants abortion to be a state issue in the post-Roe era. What he hasn鈥檛 said is how he鈥檒l handle almost any of the chaos and complexity of leaving abortion rights to the states. So we posed a list of questions to the Trump campaign. (Messerly, 4/9)
