Arkansas Again Receives a Top Ranking in the “Life List”

Abortion, , ,

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Americans United for Life has released its 2017 Life List, ranking the 50 states from best to worst on how well their laws protect human life. Arkansas retained the fourth-place ranking, just behind Oklahoma, Kansas and Louisiana.

Family Council President Jerry Cox released a statement celebrating the announcement, saying, “This is something Arkansans should be proud of. Our state is the fourth most pro-life state in the country.”

Cox said he has a lot of respect for Americans United for Life. “They’ve been doing pro-life work for forty years, now. They’ve lobbied Congress, and they know their legislation. Their survey considers state laws and policies dealing with every aspect of promoting life. That includes abortion, but it also runs the gamut of medical issues like end of life care, physician-assisted suicide, and rights of conscience in the health care field. In other words, they look at everything dealing with human life. If they say we’re number four, you can count on it.”

Cox noted that Arkansas also earned Americans United for Life’s 2017 All-Star Status for legislation protecting the lives of women and infants from abortion. “In 2015 Arkansas passed several excellent pro-life laws that help protect the lives of unborn children, and they also ensure abortion clinics are held accountable for their actions. Laws now in effect require a doctor performing an abortion on a minor to first obtain parental consent; ensures women seeking an abortion are given the full story on abortion, its consequences, and its alternatives; and prevent our tax dollars from subsidizing abortion.”

“The Arkansas Legislature has consistently passed sound, pro-life legislation. Our lawmakers have worked to make Arkansas a state where innocent, human life is respected from conception until natural death,” Cox said. He hopes Arkansas will eventually become the most pro-life state in America.

Family Council is a conservative education and research organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Congressional Panel: Planned Parenthood Should Lose Federal Funds

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A congressional panel has released findings saying Planned Parenthood should be stripped of its federal funding, based on evidence that Planned Parenthood sold organs and tissue harvested from aborted babies.

John Stonestreet at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview writes,

As a result of the revelations, the Panel, chaired by Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, held hearings and put the nation’s largest abortion provider under a long-overdue microscope. What they found wasn’t pretty, to say the least.

The least troubling was a pattern of over-billing Medicaid and other healthcare funding programs to the tune of $132 million dollars.

More serious and far more troubling is Planned Parenthood’s disregard for the National Organ Transplant Act. The Act provides that “[i]t shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce.”

You can read Stonestreet’s full commentary here or listen to it below.

[audio:http://www.breakpoint.org/images/content/breakpoint/audio/2017/011017_BP.mp3|titles=No Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood]

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U of A Polling Shows Arkansans Still Oppose Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage

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This week the University of Arkansas released its annual Arkansas Poll for 2016. The poll examines Arkansans’ social and political views as well as approval of elected officials.

This year’s poll found Arkansans’ views have changed very little on, among other things, abortion and same-sex marriage.

Since 2015, 46% of Arkansans have said it ought to be more difficult to get an abortion; only 13% said it ought to be easier.

This confirms polling from other sources that has consistently found Americans oppose late-term abortion and believe abortion ought to be illegal in some or all circumstances.

Even though the U.S. Supreme Court nullified state marriage laws nationwide with its Obergefell decision in 2015, 57% of Arkansans still think same-sex marriage should not be recognized.

The numbers go up when the responses are narrowed to likely voters, with 48% of likely voters opposing abortion and 60% opposing same-sex marriage.

You can read the poll summary here.

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