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A deceptive measure that would prohibit Arkansas from regulating abortion until after 18 weeks gestation was disqualified from eligibility for November’s ballot this week after the state’s secretary of state found that the abortion activists leading the charge ignored signature-gathering laws to pad the numbers for their petition.
The Arkansas Constitution’s 68th amendment pledges “to protect the life of every unborn child from conception until birth, to the extent permitted by the Federal Constitution.”
The abortion proposal is billed by its drafters as Arkansans for Limited Government (ALG) as protecting abortion exceptions such as rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The text of the amendment, however, would permit abortion, regardless of state statute, through all nine months of gestation for broad and vaguely defined scenarios involving fatal fetal anomalies and the health of the woman.
ALG claimed it garnered more than 100,000 signatures on a petition that blatantly seeks to override the will of a majority of Americans by the early July deadline. In a letter to one of the abortion amendment drafters, however, Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston said activists not only failed to submit the names of paid signature canvassers but also did not verify they adequately briefed those same canvassers on state laws regarding petitions.
“Even if your failure to comply with [the law] did not require me to reject your submission outright, it would certainly mean that signatures gathered by paid canvassers in your submission could
