Arkansas Supreme Court Rejects Effort From Leftist Group To Put Abortion On November Ballot

The Arkansas Supreme Court rejected a last ditch effort from a leftist group seeking to get an abortion amendment added to the November ballot that would roll back pro-life protections.

On Thursday, the court ruled 4-3 against a challenge from the pro-abortion Arkansans for Limited Government (AFLG) to Secretary of State John Thurston’s decision to reject their amendment liberalizing the state’s abortion laws from the ballot. Thurston rejected the ballot initiative last month, saying that the group failed to disclose who it had paid to gather 14,143 of the signatures it collected in support of ballot placement.

“This court is being asked to order another constitutional officer, the Arkansas Secretary of State, to ignore a mandatory statutory provision that he has enforced,” the majority wrote. “That is not the proper role of the court.”

“We find that the secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification,” the majority added.

The ballot initiative would have added exceptions to existing Arkansas abortion law for rape, incest, and fetal anomaly, as well as instituting a right to an abortion up to 18 weeks after conception. At 18 weeks, an unborn baby’s digestive system begins working and they can hear sounds.

Dissenting Justices Karen Baker and Courtney Rae Hudson claimed that Thurston had manufactured a reason to reject the proposed amendment.

“This requirement was made up out of whole cloth,” they wrote. “Regnat Populus — The People Rule — is the motto of Arkansas. Today’s decision strips every Arkansan of this power.”

Thurston said that his office was only following the law when it rejected the amendment.

“During the electoral process, my staff maintained the highest professional standards and did not allow partisan politics or misinformation to deter them from their duty to comply with the law,” he said in a statement. “I am dedicated to my calling to serve Arkansans and will continue to do so.”

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The court’s ruling was praised by GOP Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Proud I helped build the first conservative Supreme Court majority in the history of Arkansas and today that court upheld the rule of law, and with it, the right to life,” she said in a post on X.

Other red states like Florida and South Dakota will have abortion rights on the ballot in 2024, while abortion measures are pending in other conservative states like Missouri and Montana.