William Howell wrote Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban. He modeled it on California’s

It was the era of the Wild West, when white men from back East were flooding into Arizona to reap the golden bounty of the land, take over territories and establish laws. William Howell, a New Yorker tasked with writing the code that would enshrine Arizona as a territory, cracked open the law books of a neighboring state as a model: California. “History doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” said Melanie Sturgeon, a retired state archivist and co-founder and president of Arizona Women’s History Alliance. Born and raised on a farm in New York, Howell began teaching at 16, became an editor of a newspaper at 19 and by 24 was practicing law, wrote John Goff in his article “William T. Howell and the Howell Code of Arizona.” Judge William Howell, a New Yorker, wrote the code that would enshrine Arizona as a territory, based on the law books of a neighboring state: California. The paragraph is tucked into a section of Arizona code about punishment for poisoning another person: “And 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,” both the California and Arizona codes state, adding that a physician will be excepted from the law “who in the discharge of his professional duties deems it necessary to produce the miscarriage of any woman in order to save her life.” Howell earned a total of $7,500 for his work on the job, and the honorific of Arizona’s founding document being named “the Howell Code,” according to Wagoner’s book.