This law clearly violates the Constitution and nearly five decades of binding Supreme Court precedent that protects the right to access abortion,” said Meagan Burrows, staff attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “Arkansas’s anti-abortion politicians know that Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land, but they passed this abortion ban anyway, which triggers a direct challenge to Roe. We are not going to stand by while Arkansas attempts to deny people their constitutional right to abortion care. Abortion remains legal in all 50 states, and we’ll see the state of Arkansas in court to make sure it stays that way.”
In the bill, Arkansas legislators explicitly urge the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Arkansas law goes way beyond the 15-week Mississippi ban that the Supreme Court agreed to consider on appeal in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In that case, the court has said it will decide the question of whether all pre-viability prohibitions on abortion are unconstitutional.
