The possible enforcement of an 1864 law — passed decades before Arizona became a state or women received the right to vote — is expected to galvanize efforts to get a measure on the November ballot protecting the right to abortion in the state constitution, as well as boost efforts to elect Democratic officials across the state committed to protecting the procedure.

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said the decision would “cause untold harm to the people of Arizona” and underscored the consequences of the 2024 election for abortion access.

“It’s a painful reminder of exactly why we need to send Rep. Gallego to the Senate and reelect President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House: so we can lock the federal right to abortion into law and undo these dangerous bans,” Timmaraju said.

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday. The campaign trip, which was already in the works prior to the court decision, will likely take on a heightened focus on abortion rights and access.

The decision is the second in as many weeks that could offer voters in November a chance to unwind anti-abortion statutes at the ballot box, following the recent ruling in Florida to allow a six-week near-total ban to take effect and an abortion-rights measure on the November ballot.

Former Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican who signed a 15-week abortion ban into law in 2022, said in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that the ruling was “not the outcome [he] would have preferred” and called on lawmakers to “heed the will of the people and address this issue with a policy that is workable and reflective of our electorate.”

Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake, in a statement Tuesday, called on Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and the state’s GOP-controlled legislature to “come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support.” She added that ultimately “Arizona voters will make the decision” at the ballot box in November.

It’s unclear how, whether and when the law will be enforced. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes has said she would not prosecute anyone under the law, though local prosecutors could still do so. Any enforcement or threat of enforcement stands to wipe out access to the procedure in the swing state.

“I sent the best lawyers in our office up to the Arizona Supreme Court,” Mayes told POLITICO last month. “Even the 15-week ban is not acceptable. It has no exceptions for rape or incest, so it’s certainly not something that I like. But the 1864 law is bonkers. It was a law that was passed when Arizona wasn’t a state yet, when the Civil War was still raging, and when women couldn’t vote. It’s obviously not something that the people of this state want to see imposed on women here.”

The Arizona court, in a 4-2 decision, said that it wouldn’t interfere with the legislature’s authority to craft abortion policy and that the body had voiced its “unwavering intent” since the passage of the 1864 law to prohibit the procedure.

“A policy matter of this gravity must ultimately be resolved by our citizens through the legislature or the initiative process,” the court’s opinion said. “We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgment, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens.”

The court’s decision prohibits enforcement of the law for 14 days, which the body said would give the parties in the lawsuit time to pursue any constitutional challenges to the pre-statehood law. But that timeline is expected to be extended for at least 45 days after the high court finalizes its ruling, under a decision in a separate court challenge.

Angela Florez, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona, said her organization will be able to provide abortions through a “substantial” portion of May, at a minimum.

“Today is a dark day for Arizona. Today’s deplorable decision from the Arizona Supreme Court sends Arizona back nearly 150 years,” Florez said on a call with reporters after the ruling came out. “This ruling will cause long lasting detrimental harms for our communities.”

What’s next: Arizona progressives are fanning out across the state collecting signatures for the ballot initiative, and this week announced that they have more than enough to qualify, with months to go before the deadline.

The groups spearheading the effort anticipate the court’s ruling will spur voters’ desire to turn out in support of the measure this fall.

“Arizona voters will be upset with what the court does, and will want to come out and take matters into their own hands,” Chris Love, a senior adviser for the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign. “This initiative is a way to do that.”

How we got here: A 15-week ban Arizona lawmakers passed in 2019 went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022. But the state also had a long-dormant 1864 law that criminalized abortion from the moment of conception and threatened prison for doctors performing the procedure. The state’s former Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich, asked state judges to allow the enforcement of the 160-year-old law, and most abortion providers in the state temporarily halted services, afraid of criminal charges.

A state judge in Tucson ruled in favor of the 1864 ban. Then Planned Parenthood sued, arguing that the state should be prohibited from prosecuting abortion providers for terminations in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. An appeals court agreed, leaving the 1864 ban in place but ruling that doctors can’t be charged for abortions up to 15 weeks. Abortion clinics reopened but anti-abortion rights groups appealed to the state Supreme Court, which heard arguments in December.

As the case moved up the pipeline, Mayes, as the state’s newly elected Democratic attorney general, switched sides, throwing her office’s resources into fighting the ban rather than defending the 19th-century law.