Little Rock, Arkansas.- Arkansas election officials on Wednesday rejected requests to put abortion rights on the ballot, a measure organizers had hoped to bring before voters next November in a predominantly Republican state.
The state government’s department rejected Friday’s requests by supporters of the proposal, saying the group had failed to file required disclosures regarding paid signature gatherers.
Organizers submitted more than 101,000 signatures on Friday. They needed at least 90,704 signatures from registered voters and a minimum number from 50 counties.
In his letter to organizers, state Secretary of State John Thurston said that even if his office were to accept the signatures determined to be from volunteers, the total would still be 87,382, short of the required number.
A spokesman for Arkansans for Limited Government, the group sponsoring the measure, said its legal team is reviewing the state’s letter.
The measure would have blocked laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy and allowed the procedure to be performed later in pregnancy in cases of rape, incest, risks to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus had little chance of surviving birth.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down abortion rights nationwide in 2022, triggering a nationwide push to have voters decide the issue state by state. An Arkansas law banning pregnancy termination went into effect following the court’s ruling. The state’s current measure only allows abortion to protect the mother’s life in a medical emergency.
The proposal was seen as a test of support for abortion rights in a Republican state where top officials have long proclaimed their opposition to abortion.
Following the decision, Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted on social media that “today the far-left pro-abortionists in Arkansas have proven that they are immoral and incompetent.”
The proposal to include abortion rights on the ballot did not have the support of national abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood because it would still have banned the procedure at 20 weeks gestation.
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