2022 was a year of monumental victory for the pro-life movement. The overturning of Roe v. Wade led fourteen states to implement bans on elective abortions, while other states adopted robust restrictions based on gestational age. As we celebrate these successes, we need to be conscious of pro-aborts’ new deceptive tactics to pass laws that go far beyond Roe.
Abortion extremists are at work in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota to reverse life-saving laws enacted since Dobbs v JWHO.
In Arkansas, the group “Arkansans for Limited Government” is proposing a constitutional amendment that would allow abortion up to 18 weeks after conception – which as defined is really 20 weeks’ gestation. At 20 weeks, babies are nearly fully developed and over 10 inches long. Aborting them entails ripping their limbs off prior to delivering their lifeless bodies. In barbarous irony, the Arkansas Times claims the amendment will make Arkansas’ abortion laws “slightly less brutal.”
In a state where abortion clinics no longer exist, the “Arkansas Reproductive Healthcare Amendment” would be a disastrous step backward for the protection of life – and for the pro-life movement.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin rejected the initial wording of the amendment, taking issue with both the proposal’s title and its contents. Per Griffin, the name is “tinged with partisan coloring” and misleads readers with the term “reproductive healthcare” when the amendment is “solely related to abortion.” Aside from the title, Griffin deemed several aspects of the proposal “not readily understood by voters.”
Of course, that is exactly the intended effect – to deceive voters by couching this and similar amendments in language promising to protect “personal health care decisions.” A similar strategy was successfully employed in Ohio, where voters approved an amendment that prohibits restrictions on abortion through viability – in a state that had previously passed a six-week abortion ban.
Arkansans for Limited Government reintroduced its revised proposal yesterday. If the group can gather enough signatures, the amendment will appear on the November 2024 ballot.
Life Legal is working with like-minded pro-life organizations to make voters aware of the dangers of abortion amendments. All of the proposed amendments include sweeping “health” exceptions that allow abortion through birth. Rather than keeping the government out of personal decisions, as pro-aborts claim, the amendments prohibit states from protecting the most vulnerable – precious babies in the womb.