PHOENIX — For the anti-abortion movement, Arizona was supposed to be different.
After two years of losing abortion ballot measure fights around the country, conservatives held up the state’s 15-week ban as a winning post- Roe strategy — a middle ground they argued most Americans embrace.
Instead, with just days left until Election Day, Arizonans are poised to handily reject the 15-week ban and add abortion protections to their state constitution, just as voters did in Michigan, Ohio and other red and purple states while facing six-week and near-total bans. It’s the latest evidence that even voters who tell pollsters they oppose second- and third-trimester abortions will, when given a chance, vote against government-imposed restrictions on the procedure — regardless of the number of weeks.
Passage of Arizona’s measure would undermine the argument from the country’s biggest anti-abortion groups and leading GOP officials — including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and, at one time , former President Donald Trump — that rallying around a 15-week cutoff would help neutralize an issue that has dogged conservatives throughout the 2024 campaign. Even as they succeed in banning the procedure in roughly one-third of the country, a loss in Arizona would show how far the anti-abortion movement has to go to win a majority of voters.