The U.S. is the most permissive country in the world when it comes to pushing gender ideology and giving kids puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
Watch this video to learn more.
A proposal at the Arkansas Legislature would make it easier to prosecute a person who gives pornographic or obscene material to children.
S.B. 81 by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R – Russellville) and Rep. Justin Gonzales (R – Okolona) generally makes it a crime to give or send “material harmful to minors” to a child.
The bill defines “material harmful to minors” to include sexual material that contains nudity or sexual activity.
The bill also eliminates exemptions for libraries and schools in the state’s obscenity statute — which would make it easier to prosecute a librarian or public school employee who distributes obscene material — and it creates a civil cause of action Arkansans can use if the state, a city, or a county distributes obscene material.
Taken together, the changes that S.B. 81 makes to Arkansas law could help address pornographic and obscene material in public libraries in Arkansas.
As we have written before, the Jonesboro public library has been at the center of multiple controversies over its decision to place books with sexually-explicit images in its children’s section while failing to adopt a policy that separates sexual material from children’s content.
Library officials have stood by their decision to share sexual material with children. The library even posted on Facebook that it isn’t the library’s responsibility to protect kids from obscenity.
Other public libraries in Arkansas have failed to separate sexual material from children’s material as well.
Public libraries are supposed to be for everyone. More and more, Family Council is hearing from people who are deeply troubled by the obscene children’s books that librarians have placed on the shelves of their local libraries.
Proposals like S.B. 81 could help protect children and families from patently inappropriate material in public libraries.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
On Thursday Rep. Richard Womack (R – Arkadelphia) and Sen. Matt McKee (R – Pearcy) filed H.B. 1174.
The bill would change Arkansas’ law concerning fetal homicide. It also would amend the state’s wrongful death law that governs lawsuits people can file when an unborn child is killed.
Current law exempts a woman from prosecution or other legal action when her unborn baby is killed. This prevents a woman from being prosecuted or sued for the death of her unborn child — even if the child’s death is caused by an abortion.
H.B. 1174 would amend Arkansas’ law in such a way that a woman could be prosecuted for having an abortion, and she could be sued if her unborn child dies.
The bill contains exceptions for “accidental miscarriage,” and for certain types of medical procedures necessary to save the life of the woman. It is unclear at this time how a court might interpret these exceptions in light of Arkansas’ other laws concerning abortion.
As Family Council has said before, our laws should not punish a woman who has an illegal abortion. Here are four reasons why not.
Before 1973, abortion generally was illegal in Arkansas.
The Arkansas Legislature enacted the state’s first laws against abortion around 1875.
As far as our team can tell, from 1875 to 1973 Arkansas never prosecuted women for having illegal abortions.
The abortionist could be prosecuted for breaking the law, but not the woman. The same was true in many other states that prohibited abortion prior to Roe v. Wade.
Even though Arkansans recognized that abortion was wrong, they also recognized that there were serious problems with prosecuting a woman who has an abortion.
Over the decades, we have heard countless women say that they were pressured into having an abortion against their will.
In some cases it was a parent who told them they had to have an abortion. In other cases it was an abusive boyfriend.
Some pro-lifers have speculated that human traffickers may force their victims to have abortions if they become pregnant.
It isn’t right to prosecute a woman who may have been forced to have an abortion against her will.
Now that abortion is prohibited in Arkansas, our authorities need to be able to prosecute abortionists who violate the law.
In order to do that, they may need testimony from women who have gone to those abortionists for illegal abortion procedures.
Will women come forward to testify against abortionists in court if they know that they can be prosecuted too?
In the long run, prosecuting women as well as abortionists may make it harder to hold abortionists accountable for breaking the law.
Since last June, Arkansas has been able to prohibit abortion and shut down abortion facilities without punishing a single woman.
Under our existing pro-life laws, the State of Arkansas can prosecute abortionists and close their abortion facilities.
We don’t have to prosecute women in order to prevent abortion in Arkansas.
The Arkansas Legislature is very likely the most pro-life legislature in the nation. After all, Arkansas has been ranked the most pro-life state in America for several years now. We applaud the pro-life spirit demonstrated by our good friends Rep. Womack and Sen. McKee. Their introduction of this bill proves that they care deeply about this issue, and we are grateful for that. Sometimes friends simply agree to disagree on certain policies. We are looking forward to working with both of these great lawmakers on many more good laws during this legislative session.
