Group Approved to Circulate Petitions for Amendment Writing Abortion into Arkansas Constitution

Abortion, , , ,

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Little Rock, Ark. – On Tuesday the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office certified a popular name and ballot title for the Arkansas Abortion Amendment of 2024. The measure’s sponsors now can begin collecting the 90,704 petition signatures necessary to place the measure on the ballot this November.

Family Council President Jerry Cox released a statement, saying, “This is a radical amendment legalizing abortion in a way Arkansas has never seen before. It writes abortion into the Arkansas Constitution. It erases virtually all of Arkansas’ pro-life laws, and it allows abortion on demand without restriction through the first eighteen weeks of pregnancy. As many as three thousand unborn children could be aborted in Arkansas each year because of this amendment, and the State of Arkansas would be powerless to prevent it.”

Cox said the amendment prevents Arkansas’ lawmakers from enacting basic abortion regulations. “Under this amendment, lawmakers and voters would lose the ability to enact even basic abortion regulations. The measure says abortion cannot be restricted at all during the first eighteen weeks after fertilization. That means abortionists won’t be required to have parental consent before performing an abortion on an underage girl. Abortionists won’t be required to explain the abortion procedure to the woman beforehand. These are requirements that people on both sides of the aisle have supported in the past, but this amendment would prevent them.”

Cox said the amendment also fails to address basic health and safety standards for abortion. “Nothing in this amendment requires abortionists to be licensed to practice medicine in Arkansas. It doesn’t require abortionists to follow basic health and safety standards. It doesn’t ensure that abortion facilities will be licensed or inspected. Courts could use it to require the State of Arkansas to pay for abortions with taxpayer funds. These are serious flaws with the amendment.”

Cox said the amendment likely would result in thousands of unborn children aborted every year, if passed. “Prior to the 2022 Dobbs decision, there were upwards of three thousand or more elective abortions performed in Arkansas each year during the first eighteen weeks of pregnancy. If this amendment passes, we estimate that at least that many unborn children would be aborted each year. For those thousands of children, this amendment literally is a matter of life and death. That’s the most serious problem with this measure.”

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Photo Credit: By jordanuhl7 [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Congressional Committee Alleges Federal Government Urged Banks to Flag Purchases of Religious Books, Sporting Goods

Religious Freedom,

A congressional committee is alleging the federal government pressured banks to flag purchases of religious texts, sporting goods, and political material.

On Wednesday Congressman Jim Jordan (R — Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, sent a letter to Noah Bishoff, the former director of an office in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Evidence presented in the letter suggests the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network provided banks and other financial institutions with guiding “typologies” — patterns that could be used to identify suspicious people or activities.

According to the letter, the federal government gave banks search terms that could help flag certain transactions. These search terms and patterns included words like “TRUMP” and “MAGA”, as well as behaviors like booking travel for unclear purposes or buying “books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.”

All of this suggests that the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network encouraged banks to search their customer transactions for these signs as a way of policing political and religious activity.

The letter also expresses concern that banks were encouraged to use Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) to look for terms like, “Bass Pro Shops,” “Cabela’s,” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods” when carrying out “Active Shooter Detection.” Despite these purchases being legal, it seems the federal government treated them as indicators of a potential threat.

Although this congressional committee letter does not get into banking practices, other outlets have reported in the past how government policies allegedly encourage banks to designate conservative organizations as posing a “high risk” or “reputational risk” — giving the banks an excuse to close their accounts.

In 2021 Family Council’s credit card processor terminated its account after designating our organization as “high risk.”

At 10:29 AM on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, our office received a terse email from our credit card processor — a company owned by JPMorgan Chase — saying, “Unfortunately, we can no longer support your business. We wish you all the luck in the future, and hope that you find a processor that better fits your payment processing needs.”

Within sixty seconds, our account was terminated and and Family Council could no longer accept donations online. All we can do is speculate that our conservative principles and our public policy work might have had something to do with the decision to close our account.

Unfortunately, other organizations have had similar experiences as well.

You Can Read Congressman Jim Jordan’s Letter Here.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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