The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision to toss a pro-abortion ballot initiative over administrative failures by the organizers, Just The News reported. Arkansans for Limited Government was attempting to enshrine abortion rights through an amendment to the state's constitution.
The decision means this issue will not appear on the ballot in November's general election. The lower court had thrown out the ballot initiative because Arkansas for Limited Government didn't provide documentation for the people who were paid to gather signatures.
The state's high court ruled in a 4-3 decision to keep the question off the ballot. "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 court said.
This decision is a blow to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for president on a radically pro-abortion ticket. She and other Democrats have leaned into the issue this election cycle as Republicans continue to fight for the rights of the unborn.
The initiative the group proposed would have allowed abortion for all reasons up to 20 weeks in pregnancy, and up until birth for cases of rape, incest, and threats to the mother's health. Shockingly, abortion perpetrators at Planned Parenthood found it was too restrictive to back.
Arkansas for Limited Government was outraged at the decision that meant babies would escape the abortionists' instruments of death. The organizers called it a "dark day for Arkansas" in an emailed statement to the Associated Press.
"This effort has generated a wave of fiercely engaged Arkansas women. We are outraged," the group added.
"We will not back down. And we will remember this in November," Arkansas for Limited Government claimed. However, thanks to the Arkansas Supreme Court judges, their perverted priorities will have to wait.
The state's GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted to X that the reprieve for the unborn came about in part because of her leadership.
"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," Sanders said.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Democrats have doubled down on their crusade to keep abortion legal throughout pregnancy. As Politico pointed out, Democrats now speak of it in a way "once unimaginable."
Far from the "safe, legal, and rare" mantra previously embraced to make it more palatable, Democrats are now about championing abortion as a sacred right. That was the theme at this week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Harris sees this as a winning issue, as it has become front and center now that a bad U.S. Supreme Court precedent has been overturned. Democrats see it as a foundation for their platform and a way to win over women voters, but they won't benefit from the ballot initiative to drive turnout in Arkansas.
"Look at the immediate shift that we’ve seen with the vice president around trusting women. From a messaging standpoint, it’s really important because it’s setting up a broader kind of values framework for the policy to live in," Planned Parent CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said about the change in an interview.
The ballot initiative in Arkansas was defeated, and that is good news. However, the broader issue is that this is quickly becoming a nation where women believe they're only free when they have the right to kill their babies.
