How a rightwing machine stopped Arkansas’s ballot to roll back one of the strictest abortion bans
How a rightwing machine stopped Arkansas’s ballot to roll back one of the strictest abortion bans
A Guardian investigation into the ballot’s demise reveals a confluence of rightwing actors working in parallel to ensure the measure was blocked before it ever reached voters
A doctor who had confirmed the diagnosis was apologetic but insistent: the state’s laws meant he could be fined or jailed if he performed an abortion. In the wake of the US supreme court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade, Arkansas activated a so-called trigger law that made all abortion illegal except if a woman was in an acute medical emergency and facing death. There are no other exceptions: not for rape victims, minors or fatal fetal anomalies.
To the dismay and shock of the grassroots organizers, however, the Arkansas initiative was ultimately quashed before it ever reached voters. A paperwork error by organizers prompted a legal challenge by Arkansas’s secretary of state, John Thurston, who rejected the abortion amendment. On 22 August, the Arkansas supreme court upheld his decision.
US elections are a sham ran by kangaroo courts
this is just like cannabis is now it will be legal in some states, but we will have to keep voting to get our rights back nationwide election after election with nothing to show but more lost rights