Arizona just repealed its 1864 abortion ban. Democrats don’t want voter outrage to disappear with it.

Arizona lawmakers on Wednesday voted to repeal the state’s Civil War-era abortion ban.

The legislation, which is expected to be soon signed into law by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, will preserve access to the procedure for millions of women. But there’s a potential political downside for Democrats, who had been using the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision last month upholding the law to foment outrage and boost turnout heading into the November election.

“Would it be easier if Republicans just stuck to their guns and didn’t repeal this thing and went down with their ship? Sure,” said Matt Grodsky, a Democratic strategist in Arizona.

President Joe Biden and Democrats down the ballot have spent the last several weeks highlighting the law, which prohibits abortion starting at conception except to save the life of the mother, as the latest example of the chaos and uncertainty that the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago has caused. They have highlighted the law’s unpopularity, which polling shows a little more than a third of voters support, and pitched it as a law out of time, passed before Arizona was a state and before women had the right to vote.

At the same time, Republicans have been scrambling to address the court’s decision, fearful of its impact on their electoral fortunes in the state, which is not only a presidential battleground but has a U.S. Senate race this year that will be key to determining control in the next Congress.

Sensing political danger, both former President Donald Trump and Senate candidate Kari Lake appealed to the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to amend the law, while the overwhelming majority of Republican state lawmakers and anti-abortion groups lined up to protect the 1864 ban.

Ultimately three Republicans broke with their party and joined all 29 Democrats last week to pass the repeal in the House. And on Wednesday, two Senate Republicans joined all 14 Democrats in their chamber to give final approval to the bill.

The repeal leaves in place an existing restriction on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a position polling shows enjoys majority support nationally. More than 90 percent of abortions happen before that point in pregnancy, federal data show.

“It bails Republicans out,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona. “Republicans can point to the 15-week limitation and say, ‘Most abortions happen in this time anyway, so what’s the big deal?’”

But it’s unclear to what extent the repeal will actually benefit individual Republicans. Trump, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, is grappling with fallout from a recent TIME interview in which he suggested states “might” monitor women’s pregnancies to see if they have received an abortion and that whether he’s comfortable with women being prosecuted for receiving illegal abortions is “irrelevant.”

Lake’s campaign said in a statement that she still “thinks the territorial law was out of step with Arizonans,” and the Senate hopeful personally lobbied Arizona lawmakers to repeal the law in the days after the Supreme Court ruling. But she has also previously called the 1864 measure a “great law” and recently expressed dismay it was not being enforced by Democratic leaders in the state.

While anti-abortion groups are mourning the legislature’s decision, with some threatening to primary the Republicans who broke ranks, they also see an opportunity to draw a contrast not only with Democrats but with an abortion-rights ballot measure that would protect the right to the procedure in the state constitution until fetal viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy, which was the standard under Roe.

Fifteen-week laws are “incredibly popular across the board not just in Arizona but all across the nation,” said Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “Abortion advocates are going to have a hard time messaging against that.”

Still, Democrats and abortion-rights groups argue that banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy interferes with a woman’s right to decide, in consultation with her doctor, whether she should receive an abortion. They also don’t think campaigning on 15 weeks in Arizona will be as successful a strategy as their opponents hope, pointing to Democrats’ legislative victories in Virginia in 2023 after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin spent more than a million dollars on TV ads touting a similar policy.

“Virginians repudiated it,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All. Virginia Democrats “were aggressive and they were consistent. They were like, ‘This is an abortion ban, period.’”

Plus, the 1864 abortion ban may still take effect before the repeal kicks in, which would likely cause further outrage that would fuel Democrats’ electoral efforts. The near-total ban is set to take effect on June 27, barring further court action, and the repeal won’t kick in until 90 days after the yet-to-be-determined end date of the legislative session, meaning the earliest it could take effect is August.

While headlines might declare the 1864 abortion ban repealed, Rep. Ruben Gallego’s (D-Ariz.) Senate campaign plan promised in an April memo to “spend now until November reminding Arizonans just how dangerous [Lake’s] position on abortion is.” The campaign launched a digital ad last month focused on Lake and the 1864 law.

The Biden campaign similarly plans to spend the next several months reminding voters that what happened in Arizona is a cautionary tale for Trump’s leave-abortion-to-the-states approach. Biden supports passing Roe-protections at the federal level, which to this point has not had enough congressional support to pass.

"Women are pissed. Families are scared. And people don’t want to live in a world where these rights can be just taken away by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans in the Arizona legislature,” said Jen Cox, a senior adviser for Biden in Arizona. “Trump has been super clear about where he stands on abortion. He took credit for Roe being repealed. He said he wants to punish women.”

It’s a similar argument to the one Arizona’s abortion-rights ballot campaign — like its sister campaigns in states like Florida, Missouri and Nevada — is making. Ballot measure backers argue that abortion is too important to be left to state courts and state legislatures, and that voters need to pass state-level constitutional protections to ensure access to the procedure in the event Biden doesn’t return to the White House, Democrats don’t control Congress, or both.

“People were just shocked. I don’t think anybody believed that the court was going to uphold a Civil War-era law that was on the books before women even had the right to vote in this country. The reaction was visceral,” said Cheryl Bruce, the campaign manager for Arizona for Abortion Access. “Rights can just be so easily taken away overnight just with a handful of judges or a handful of legislators.”

Anti-abortion groups see the ballot measure as equally important. With the 1864 law off the books, their only hope of restricting abortion access lies in defeating the ballot campaign.

“Should the ballot initiative fail, God willing,” said Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist for Students for Life, “then we can get about the business of passing a better law in Arizona than 15 weeks.”