Arkansas supreme court blocks abortion question from state ballot over paperwork error

(Reuters) - The issue of abortion rights will not appear on the Arkansas state ballot in November, the state Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, saying that activists pushing for the measure had failed to file necessary paperwork.

The decision was a blow to activists who wanted to give voters the opportunity to decide whether Arkansas should amend the state constitution and allow abortions up to 18 weeks of pregnancy. The Republican-led state currently bans all abortions except in medical emergencies, rape and incest cases.

At least nine U.S. states will have ballot measures on abortion rights in the Nov. 5 election. They include Republican-led states such as Missouri and South Dakota that banned abortion in almost all cases after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted federal abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Arkansans for Limited Government, the group backing the ballot initiative, appealed to the state supreme court after Secretary of State John Thurston refused to certify the initiative for the ballot. Thurston said the group failed to submit a document confirming the training of the campaign's paid canvassers at the same time it submitted its collected signatures, which state law requires.

The campaign submitted more than 102,000 signatures for the initiative, well above the 90,700 threshold needed to qualify a measure for the state ballot.

In a 4-3 opinion, the court said that only the signatures collected by unpaid canvassers could count, which meant the group fell short of the signatures required.

"Today is a dark day in Arkansas," Arkansans for Limited Government said in a statement. "Despite this infuriating result, our fight isn't over. We can't - and won't - rest until Arkansas women have access to safe, standard health care and the autonomy to make decisions about their bodies free from governmental interference."

Thurston confirmed that the measure will not appear on the ballot after the court's ruling and said in a statement that his staff "did not allow partisan politics or misinformation to deter them from their duty to comply with the law" in this case.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; editing by Jonathan Oatis)