Over the weekend abortion advocates began collecting signatures for the Arkansas Abortion Amendment of 2024.
The group Arkansans for Limited Government is backing the amendment. The group must collect more than 90,000 valid petition signatures to place the amendment on the November ballot.
If passed, the measure could legalize an estimated 3,000 or more elective abortions per year in Arkansas.
The Arkansas Abortion Amendment would write abortion into the Arkansas Constitution. It prohibits the state from restricting abortion at all during the first 20 weeks gestation, it creates sweeping “health” exceptions for elective abortion throughout all nine months, and it nullifies all state laws that conflict with the amendment.
Under this amendment, lawmakers and voters would lose the ability to enact abortion restrictions — including restrictions that people on both sides of the aisle have supported in the past.