Why Abolish Abortion Arkansas does not support SB6 - The Arkansas Unborn Child Protection Act

SB6, "The Arkansas Unborn Child Protection Act", passed through the Senate Monday on a vote of 27-7. Proponents and opponents alike claim that the bill would end abortion outright in the state of Arkansas.

If you are pro-life, you are probably asking yourself, "Why would a movement whose sole purpose is to abolish abortion in the state of Arkansas not support a bill that supposedly does just that?" After reading this article, you will have an understanding of why the bill falls short of the biblical standard of justice, and is ultimately dependent on a strategy that has failed for half a century.

Some aspects of SB6 possess merit. The bill calls for the end of abortion from the instant of fertilization. Previous pro-life bills compromised on the biblical principle that life begins at conception, and those bills accepted that some babies which did not achieve a particular age of development or physiological phenomenon (such as a heart beat) would not be protected for the sake of "saving some". Also, SB6 makes no exceptions for rape- or incest-conceived children, which has invariably been included in Arkansas abortion bills in the past. However, SB6 still contains moral inconsistencies, and ultimately does not establish equal protection.

The cause of abolition is built on a principled, biblical foundation, not pragmatism. When considering biblical obedience, the ends do not justify the means. The bible states that we are not to do evil (compromise or settle for less than God’s imperatives) that good may come. All Arkansans, legislators included, have a moral obligation to do what is right and stand like a tree planted by the River of Truth, regardless of what is deemed acceptable or unacceptable by society. Only TRUTH matters. Since it is TRUE that abortion is murder, since it is TRUE that God demands fair scales and equal measures, since it is TRUE that we have an obligation to obey God and esteem Him above the Supreme Court, then there remains one inescapable TRUTH: a bill of abolition that is immediate and uncompromising is the only remedy to abortion in Arkansas.

There are two key elements that a true bill of abolition must contain. A careful and prayerful evaluation of SB6, we hope you agree, finds that it falls short:

• SB6 pleads with the Supreme Court to redress and correct the grave injustice and crime against humanity that is being perpetuated by the decisions of Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v Casey. The bill goes on to describe how SCOTUS also committed grave injustices in the Dred Scott v. Sanford and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions, which denied personhood and legal protections to persons based on their ethnicity, skin color, or place of origin.
• We applaud Senator Rapert and the sponsors of SB6 for using strong language to describe the intentional killing of the unborn. However, we strongly disagree that pleading with the Supreme Court is a necessary (or realistic) means to end abortion. Forty-eight years of pro life bills appearing before the United States Supreme Court , even when the majority of the bench was Republican appointed, has proven to be a perpetual exercise in futility (SCOTUS was predominantly composed of justices appointed by pro-life Republican Presidents both in 1973 when Roe was decided and in 1992 when PP v. Casey was decided).
• In the case of 2020’s June Medical Services v. Russo, Louisiana attempted to force abortionists to have admitting privileges at local hospitals before they could perform abortions. SCOTUS found that this law created an undue burden on those seeking abortion in the state of Louisiana. In fact, any law that creates an "undue burden" on Roe, according to judicial precedent, must be thrown out. Do we then believe that the Supreme Court is going to give laws like SB6 even a first look?
• In 2019 Alabama passed the Human Life Protection Act, HB 314, that would "ban all abortions" much like the Arkansas Unborn Child Protection Act, SB6. The Alabama law was immediately challenged, never implemented, and failed to overturn Roe.

Putting our faith in the entity that sanctioned the murder of 62 million children has failed to right this national shame for 48 years. Expecting the same body of justices to end the bloodshed is not only wrong, it is just bad strategy.

Senator Rapert himself expressed disappointment in a different Court decision involving names of parents on birth certificates. On December 15, 2020, he wrote "Just when I had great hope that the new Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court would restore sanity to the federal judiciary - they reject science and truth in exchange for liberal politics." We heartily agree. But since the Court is "reject[ing] science and truth", there is no reason to expect a more favorable response to SB6.

Roe v. Wade is not law. The states have simply chosen to comply. The Supreme Court has no constitutional authority to create law or impose immoral opinions upon the states. Therefore, the states and the magistrates within them are duty bound to follow the Constitution of the United States, not an activist court that disregards both God’s moral Law and the law of the land. The Supreme Court has perpetuated tyranny upon the states, and we, the state of Arkansas, have allowed it to happen. We can no longer continue to appease tyrants and expect to end tyranny. We must defy them. The word of God tells us in Acts 5:29 that when the laws of men come in conflict with the laws of God, "We must obey God rather than men."

• SB6 fails to provide equal protection to unborn babies by perpetuating a two-victim fallacy which refuses to hold culpable all parties involved in the intentional killing of an unborn child.
• If SB6 is passed into law, a woman will still be able to pay an abortionist to kill her unborn child, or even kill the child herself, without consequences. An abortionist would receive a maximum penalty of a $100,000 fine or 10 years in prison. But, in existing Arkansas law, homicide is a capital offense: "The person enters into an agreement in which a person is to cause the death of another person in return for anything of value, and a person hired pursuant to the agreement causes the death of any person". The standards that protect unborn life are FAR different than those that protect a born person. This is not justice. This is not equal protection under the law.
• In footnote 54 of Roe v. Wade, SCOTUS references existing Texas statutes (pre-Roe) by making note of this inconsistency. In that statute, a woman was not a principal or an accomplice to the abortion she sought, and thus wasn’t prosecuted for the act of paying someone to kill her unborn child. This inconsistency gave SCOTUS further justification for ruling as they did in Roe. Blackmon was articulating the fact that not even the state of Texas itself considered abortion the same as the intentional death of a born person. We should not expect a different outcome than Roe by sending SB6 to the Supreme Court, when it explicitly contains the inconsistent element the Court recognized in deciding Roe.
• Many agencies report that the number of abortions is declining nationwide, but this is misleading. Chemical (pharmaceutical) abortions are on the rise, substantially rounding out the reduction in surgical abortions referenced in these reports. But since it is TRUE that life begins at fertilization, then any means taken to deliberately end that life must be considered an intentional abortion. The lives of children who are potential victims of chemical abortions should be protected equally as born children.
• We are not advocating retroactive punishment. Ex post facto (or after the fact punishment) criminal statutes are against the law. But if a law to protect the unborn is passed, then that law should apply to all culpable parties from the time the law passes.
• The law is a teacher and a deterrent, and there is no better teacher than holding one accountable for their actions. Since unborn lives have equal value, unequal laws should not be written which do not protect them. Nobody wants to charge a woman with a crime for the death of her unborn child, because it would mean that an unborn child is dead. God declares in Proverbs 20:23 "Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord and false scales are not good."

It is not our desire to see this response to SB6 cause division. In fact, we consider many sponsors of the bill to be friends and allies. It is our hope that this response would rally the church around the objective truth of God’s Word and propel us to take a stand as the state of Arkansas. There must be a paradigm shift among our churches and leaders if we are to end abortion in this state. We will only end this grave injustice if we are willing to proceed without fear of man or compromise on God’s standard.