A newly formed group in Arkansas is seeking to have a ballot initiative approved for the 2024 vote, giving Arkansans the chance to decide whether killing preborn children should be a constitutional right.
A non-profit called For AR People announced this week the formation of a committee, Arkansans for Limited Government, which presented a ballot initiative to the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office. The AG, however, has rejected the initiative in its current condition. According to Arkansas Online, AG Tim Griffin cited various issues with the proposed constitutional amendment, writing in a letter, “I must reject your popular name and ballot title due to ambiguities in the text of your proposed measure that prevent me from ensuring that the ballot title you have submitted, or any ballot title that I would substitute, is not misleading.”
In addition, Griffin said the proposed popular name “is tinged with partisan coloring and misleading because your proposal is solely related to abortion, not ‘reproductive healthcare’ generally.
Samuel Watson, content director of For AR People, told KARK that they had been working on the initiative since the fall of Roe v. Wade last year. “So the announcement itself is for a proposed constitutional amendment that would protect women’s right to make personal, private healthcare decisions when it comes to their reproductive rights up to 18 weeks, and then after 18 weeks, makes exceptions for rape, incest, life and health of the mother and for fatal fetal anomalies,” he said. “We think that this is a really good compromise language. We think that this will cover a lot of ground and really put the decision back into the hands of patients and providers.”
This is a photo of a preborn human being at 18 weeks:
(Original Caption) The needle telescope is inserted into the womb under local anesthetic. It is used so that doctors can control the attached syringe with accuracy. The blood sample is then taken from the placenta. The fetus in the picture is 18 weeks old. (Getty Images)
Warning: Image of abortion victim below.
The most common abortion procedure committed in the second trimester is a dilation and evacuation, or D&E, procedure. This is a violent procedure which takes place after the preborn child can likely feel pain.
During the abortion, the abortionist begins by inserting laminaria into the woman’s cervix to forcibly begin dilation; typically, she returns to the abortion facility after one or two days, at which point the abortionist uses a speculum to finish forcibly dilating her cervix. He then uses a sopher clamp to grasp each of the baby’s limbs and tear them from the child’s torso, one by one. The last and most difficult part of the procedure is said to be finding and crushing the baby’s skull inside the mother’s womb.
The baby’s body then must be reassembled outside of the womb, to ensure no parts are left inside the mother’s body.
Baby Holly was dismembered by D&E abortion at a Washington D.C. abortion business. Photo courtesy of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.
Making such an act legal, and then acting as if it is a fair “compromise” is nonsensical – and, as has been seen in other state ballot initiatives, the language is raising concerns. Arkansas Right to Life Executive Director Rose Mimms disagreed that the initiative contains language pro-lifers could agree to.
“It’s very broad language, and not letting the state really restrict abortion, any really definitive way which we have many protective laws on the books right now that do protect the mother and the unborn child, and their language has no kind of measures in there at all to protect the women from any complications that she might have that could really cost her really future reproductive health or even protect her life,” she told KARK. “Arkansas is going to continue to do what we’ve always done and that is to protect life and to protect mothers and fathers. The decision of an abortion is one that carries lifelong consequences and affects the lives of all of us.”
