Arizona's 1864 abortion law was enacted in a desert of girls's rights—that's what life was like back then

Dora Juhl, a 15-year-old teenager, entered Dr. Rosa Goodrich Boido in Phoenix. Juhl desired to end her pregnancy.

But abortion was illegal in Arizona.

Boido, the one female doctor on the town, asked Juhl for $100 – about $2,000 today – to perform the abortion.

Juhl said she could pay $27 – her entire savings – but Boido explained the legal risks, including the jail time she could face, and insisted on paying in full. Juhl left the practice, then tried to abort himself and returned to Boido's practice in physical distress.

Boido then took Juhl on as a patient. It is unclear whether Boido performed an abortion, removed fetal tissue, or just gave her painkillers. The next day the police arrived and arrested Boido. Arizona charged Boido under a 54-year-old law banning abortions. She lost her medical license and spent three months in jail before her trial with bail set at $15,000 – about $300,000 today.

Those days could soon return to Arizona.

The Arizona Supreme Court selected April 9, 2024, that the identical 160-year-old territorial law that bans abortions – unless the pregnant person's life is in peril – be repealed in force.

Since that ruling, the Arizona Legislature has been grappling with tips on how to handle the near-total ban. After several weeks of testing, the The state House of Representatives passed a repeal of the law on April 24, 2024, which now goes to the state Senate for debate and vote. But even when the ban applies completely abolishedit could still take effect temporarily this summer.

Adopted in the course of the Civil War in 1864, prescribed by this law that anyone who uses medication or surgery “to cause the miscarriage of a pregnant woman and is duly convicted thereof shall be punished with imprisonment in the territorial prison for a term not less than two nor more than five years.”

The only exception was a health care provider who “deems it necessary to induce a woman’s miscarriage in order to save her life.”

In the late 18th century, women in Arizona, as elsewhere within the United States, had no direct say within the laws that governed their bodies. As someone who teaches history I feel it's useful to know what life was like in Arizona when this abortion ban was in effect.

A desert of girls's rights

In 1864, Arizona – the official territory of the United States – was an enormous desert.

In the 1870s, Arizona had fewer than 10,000 residents, excluding the Native Americans who lived there The census refused to count and the US refused to grant citizenship.

Most of the ladies who lived within the Arizona Territory were Diné, meaning Navajo, or Chiricahua Apache. In 1864, the US Army fought against the indigenous population to take over their land. U.S. forces pushed the Apaches on reservations in Arizona and New Mexico.

Not all women in Arizona could vote, serve on juries, or exercise full control of property in a wedding. Demographically, there was a pronounced gender imbalance in the world in favor of men – women made up only 1 / 4 the non-native population.

Most white men in Arizona moved there to work as miners and soldiers. People there also worked on cattle ranches and grew cotton. Mining and ranching interests controlled politics, and plenty of Arizonans supported the Southern Confederacy, regardless that Arizona was a free territory in 1863 Slavery was not legal.

Many Arizona politicians, comparable to House Speaker William Claude Jones, were Southern transplants.

Jones was chargeable for pushing the abortion ban through the legislature. Around this time, Jones left his first wife. During his life he had three other wives, including a 12-year-old, a 15-year-old and a 14 years old on the time of their weddings.

Women's Rights in Territorial Arizona

Women had few basic rights in Arizona before it became a state in 1912. And territorial law didn’t favor women.

Hispanic and African American women had even fewer rights than white women. Arizona punished anyone who kidnapped a black man to sell him into slavery. But at the identical time, it banned “all marriages.” of whites with Negroes or mulattoes.”

Until 1871, a wife who divorced her husband on grounds of adultery faced the prospect of a court-appointed trustee to oversee any property or maintenance she received.

However, if a girl was found to have committed adultery, she ceaselessly lost all her property to her husband. The 1871 Married Women's Property Act granted women more autonomy, but marriage remained an unequal partnership.

Around 1870, women's rights activists began advocating for Arizona to follow Wyoming, Colorado and Utah Give women the correct to vote. This was 50 years before the nineteenth Amendment gave all women within the United States the correct to vote

Under the leadership of lawyer Murat Masterson, suffragists introduced a bill In 1883 women were granted the correct to vote. It went fallacious. White women were allowed to vote within the county's school board elections, however it took the determined commitment of girls's rights activists to even get that vote.

Suffragists led by Pauline O'Neill, Frances Willard Munds, and others continued to advocate for girls's suffrage—and worked to influence public opinion—through organized clubs and staged rallies.

Boido, a gynecologist, was also energetic within the fight for girls's suffrage in Arizona, advocating for sex education and fighting the death penalty, alcohol and tobacco.

In 1913, a 12 months after Arizona became a state, Women finally got the correct to vote.

Obtaining an abortion within the Territory of Arizona

Some women like Juhl have actually committed violence Abortion ban in Arizonabased on historical evidence that doctors charge high fees.

After Boido's arrest and indictment, she remained in prison for 3 months, including during her trial. The jury “found her guilty “conducting an illegal operation,” in keeping with the Arizona Republican newspaper.

Historian Mary S. Melcher has argued that Boido has not had a jury of her peers since then Women weren’t allowed to enter them.

Juhl returned to her family in Yavapai County and went back to highschool.

After her conviction in 1918 Boido became a prisoner 5159 in the ladies's section of the state prison. She served two months and was then paroled since the women's section of the prison was too hot and uninhabitable within the Arizona summer. After Boido lost her medical license, she moved to California. She died in Hawaii in 1959 on the age of 89.

Arizona maintained this 1864 abortion ban until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Roe v. Wade In 1973, the correct to abortion was constitutionally guaranteed. The court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, setting off a series of events that led to the revival of Arizona's 1864 abortion ban.