While Jones lived in Arizona, he was elected to represent Tucson in the 1st Arizona Territorial Legislative Assembly. And then, when that legislature convened in 1864, he was elected speaker of the House.
And it was that legislature — the one Jones presided over in 1864, after he had already abandoned his first wife, and married a 12-year-old and was just weeks away from marrying a 15-year-old, though still a few years away from marrying a 14-year-old — it was that legislature that passed a law reading, “Every person who shall administer or cause to be administered or taken, any medicinal substances, or shall use or cause to be used any instruments whatever, with the intention to procure the miscarriage of any woman then being with child, and shall be thereof duly convicted, shall be punished by imprisonment in the Territorial prison for a term not less than two years nor more than five years.”
And it was that piece of legislation that, earlier this week, was reinstated as law of the land in Arizona. It represents a near-total ban on abortion in the state. The state’s Supreme Court voted 4-2 that the 160-year-old law, put into place nearly five decades before Arizona was a state, should supersede the previous rule, which guarded the right to an abortion up to 15 weeks’ gestation. The new — and by new, I mean very old — law is scheduled to go into effect in two weeks’ time.
William Claude Jones sauntered into the wide expanse of a Southwestern territory more than 150 years ago, and this man’s morals are now the benchmark for the reproductive rights of the 7 million people who live in Arizona. Good night.