Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law earlier this month allowing a monument that promotes forced births to stand on the state's Capitol grounds. Last year, all abortions — even in cases of incest, rape, and rape of minors — became illegal in Arkansas, except in cases of medical emergencies which threaten the mothers' life. The privately funded, anti-abortion "monument to the unborn" will sit nearby the Capitol's religious Ten Commandments monument erected in 2018, nicely rounding out Arkansas' vision of Gilead.
From The Hill:
The text of Arkansas Senate Bill 307 rebukes the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which established the right to an abortion, and subsequent decisions like the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The law sets up a "Monument to Unborn Children Display Fund" to raise money "for the purpose of erecting and maintaining a suitable monument on the State Capitol grounds commemorating unborn children aborted during the era of Roe v. Wade," and requires the Arkansas secretary of state to "permit and arrange placement" of the memorial.
Although the state's blood-red House and Senate both passed the bill, not all anti-abortion Republicans were on board. "Public memorials to our nation's wars where we face an external threat are right and proper," Republican Rep. Steve Unger said. "A memorial to an ongoing culture war where we seem to be shooting at each other is not."
But now that Huckabee (and Tennessee lawmakers, who approved a similar monument in 2018) has paved the way, perhaps Capitol monuments memorializing all the children whose lives were lost to school shooters will be next.
