On Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a good law clarifying that abortion by fraud is a crime in Arkansas.
Right now abortion in Arkansas is generally prohibited except to save the life of the mother, and it is illegal to deliver abortion-inducing drugs into the state. Arkansas also has laws prohibiting fetal homicide.
However, Arkansas has no specific law addressing situations in which a person secretly gives abortion drugs like RU-486 to a pregnant woman.
H.B. 1551 by Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R — Paragould) makes it a felony to try to kill an unborn child by secretly giving a pregnant woman abortion-inducing drugs without her knowledge or consent.
In 2022 abortion drugs were secretly placed in Catherine Herring’s water in order to cause the death of her unborn child.
Ms. Herring suffered serious health complications and had to be hospitalized as a result. Since then, states have begun proposing laws like H.B. 1551 to prevent this type of crime.
H.B. 1551 passed the Arkansas House and Arkansas Senate without a single lawmaker voting against it. With the governor’s signature on Tuesday, H.B. 1551 is now slated to take full effect later this summer.
Family Council appreciates our friends at Arkansas Right to Life, who were the lead champions of this good law. We appreciate all of the state legislators who voted for H.B. 1551, and we appreciate the governor signing it into law.
H.B. 1551 is a good law that will help protect women and unborn children from dangerous abortion drugs. That is something Arkansans should be proud of.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
