The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s rejection of petition signatures for an abortion -rights ballot initiative on Thursday, blocking the proposal from heading to the polls on Election Day in November.
The ruling affirms the decision from Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston to reject the ballot measure because the group spearheading the effort failed to disclose critical information about the paid canvassers hired to collect citizen signatures.
The proposed abortion amendment would have prohibited the state legislature from passing an abortion ban within the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, approximately the halfway mark in a typical 40-week pregnancy.
Arkansas is one of 14 states across the country that prohibits abortion at any stage of pregnancy, the only exception to which is to save the life of the mother.
Election officials said nearly 88,000 signatures submitted were collected by volunteers with the campaign, but they could not determine whether 912 of the signatures came from volunteers or paid canvassers.
A state law passed in 2013 requires campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and documenting that the rules of gathering signatures were explained to them.
Although the organizing committee supporting the amendment, Arkansans for Limited Government, provided the state with the names of the paid canvassers, the canvassing company did not sign off on the required state documents.
“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 4-3 majority on the court ruled.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin called the decision a “big win for the rule of law,” referring to the law on paid canvassers.
“The Arkansas Supreme Court confirmed today that the abortion advocates failed to follow the law that other ballot committees had successfully followed for over a decade,” Griffin wrote on X.
A spokesperson for Arkansans for Limited Government told the Washington Examiner that the ruling marked "a dark day in Arkansas."
"Despite this infuriating result, our fight isn’t over," the spokesperson said.
Caitlin Connors, southern regional director for the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, told the Washington Examiner that the decision was worth celebrating.
"Today's development is a win," Connors said. "It not only preserves the law that protects 3,133 babies in the womb annually but also guards women from a predatory abortion lobby that would remove every single safety regulation on abortion businesses from the books under this amendment and endanger mothers' lives."
Unlike the abortion-rights amendments in other states this election cycle, the Arkansas abortion amendment would not have created a constitutional right to abortion. The proposed measure would have also created exceptions for rape, incest, the health of the mother, and fatal fetal anomaly.
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Voters in 10 other states will have abortion rights on the ballot in November to enshrine constitutional protections for abortion following the federal Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Arizona, Missouri, Florida, and South Dakota are the only states among those with abortion amendments on the November ballot that have enacted some form of abortion restrictions since the overturning of Roe. Arkansans for Limited Government did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment at the time of publication.
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