In a pro-life victory, Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston has rejected a radical pro-abortion amendment from the November ballot.
Thurston rejected it over a failure to submit an affidavit regarding canvassers who were paid to gather signatures. He said the pro-aboriton group behind the amendment, the misnamed Arkansans for Limited Government, did not submit a statement that identified paid canvassers by name and affirmed that canvassers had been notified of the state’s laws and rules regarding signature collection.
In a 2015 case, the state Supreme Court “expressly found this requirement to be constitutional,” Thurston wrote.
He also said the lack of such an affidavit made it so the amendment had to be rejected, saying “it would certainly mean that signatures gathered by paid canvassers in your submission could not be counted for any reason.”
The abortion proponents content they submitted 87,382 signatures from volunteers and 14,143 from paid canvassers – and the figure submitted from volunteers is short of the 90,704 threshold required to make the ballot under state law.
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“Therefore, even if I could accept your submission, I would be forced to find that your petition is insufficient on its face for failure to obtain the required 90,704 signatures,” Thurston wrote.
According to public documents, the group spent tens of thousands of dollars paying more than 150 petition canvassers to collect signatures across the state. However, pro-life volunteers have been active in communities all over Arkansas as well.
If passed, the Arkansas Abortion Amendment would prevent the State of Arkansas from restricting abortion during the first five months of pregnancy — essentially allowing unlimited aboritons and would allow thousands of elective abortions on healthy women and unborn children every year.
The amendment does not contain any medical licensing or health and safety standards for abortion, and it does not require abortions to be performed by a physician or in a licensed medical facility.
It automatically nullifies all state laws that conflict with the amendment, jeopardizing basic abortion regulations — like parental-consent and informed-consent requirements that both sides of the aisle have supported in the past.
The measure contains sweeping exceptions that would permit abortion through all nine months of pregnancy in many cases.
The amendment also would pave the way for publicly funded abortion in Arkansas by changing Amendment 68 to the Arkansas Constitution that currently prohibits taxpayer funded abortion in the state.
