Arizona’s abortion ban is the biggest story in US. How media covered the ‘alarming news’

If there was any doubt that Arizona will play a major role in the 2024 election — and that what goes on in the state will be covered as big stories by national media — breaking news on Tuesday, April 9 dispelled it.

The Arizona Supreme Court upheld a 160-year-old law banning nearly all abortions in the state. News alerts went out immediately from all sorts of media sites. The decision was the lead story on the home pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Hill and more. The Arizona Republic’s website, azcentral, used huge headlines of the sort reserved only for the biggest stories.

Which it is. And local and national coverage reflected that.

News coverage of Arizona’s abortion ban focused on politics

“It’s huge,” Brianna Keilar, co-host of “CNN News Central,” put it.

The coverage, whether on cable TV news shows or on newspaper and magazine websites, focused largely on two things.

First, 1864 was a long time ago — several commentators noted that slavery was still legal when the law went into effect, that women were not allowed to vote and that Arizona was not yet a state. Jake Tapper began his show saying, “Arizona going back to the Civil War-era for their abortion laws,” using a description heard a lot Tuesday, along with “19th Century” and, again in Tapper’s case, “kind of ancient.”

Second, and this is how the bulk of the coverage was framed, the decision has enormous political repercussions. Certainly, the practical application of the law and how it will (or won’t) be enforced, was covered, as well, but often in a political context. What will it mean in November?

For instance, this is how the Wall Street Journal began its story: “Arizona’s highest court on Tuesday revived a 160-year-old ban on abortion, a decision that ratchets up the political stakes in a state that could decide the 2024 presidential race.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, opened her daily briefing with the decision: “I want to start by addressing some devastating and alarming news from the Arizona Supreme Court.”

And Joyce Vance, a law professor and MSNBC contributor, posted on X, “Terrible news for Arizona women. Probably good news for Democratic candidates in the state including a vulnerable Senate seat.”

That race got plenty of mention, as well. Both Ruben Gallego, the presumptive Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, and Kari Lake, the presumptive Republican candidate, quickly issued statements opposing the ruling.

Lake’s opposition stands in contrast to an earlier comment in which she called the 1864 ban “a great law that is already on the books.”

Tuesday was a big news day, but Arizona was the story

Of course, that was then, this is now; Donald Trump and other Republican candidates have seen the political fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade, and have tried to adjust their stances accordingly.

Or, as Keilar said on CNN of Lake’s statement, “It seems like she’s looking at this, saying, ‘Wow, this may have just cost me this election if this stands.”

It actually took TV news a little time to get to the Arizona story. The parents of a Michigan teenager who killed four students in a 2021 school shooting were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison shortly before the Arizona Supreme Court announced its decision. Tuesday was a busy news day all around, with an appeals court judge denying a request from Trump to delay his criminal hush money trial, scheduled to begin Monday, April 15, in which the former president faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Fox News didn’t devote a lot of time to the story, but most other outlets eventually did, even though so much else was going on. All roads lead to November eventually, it seems.

And through Arizona.

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Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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