Two justices on the Arizona Supreme Court called out the "bombshell" in their colleagues' historic abortion ruling.

In a 4-2 decision, the state's high court upheld an 1864 law on Tuesday, which was codified in 1901, allowing a near-total abortion ban to go into effect in Arizona. Under the 123-year-old law, all procedures are barred except in cases when "it is necessary to save" the life of the mother. The ruling will further restrict abortion in Arizona, where a 15-week ban was already in place.

In her dissenting opinion, joined by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, Vice Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer said that her colleagues' decision "mistakenly returns us to the territorial-era abortion statute last operative in 1973."

She warned that it was "implausible to conclude" if state lawmakers "planted within the construction note a bombshell of reverting to a near–total ban on abortion... by using the term 'currently unlawful.'"

Former federal prosecutor and elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek that Timmer's dissent expressed her frustrations that the Arizona Supreme Court didn't attempt to "harmonize" the state's existing 15-week ban and the 1964 law, instead choosing to "justify its conclusion that both statutes apply despite their inconsistencies."