The heartbreaker of the session in criminal justice was the failure of Democratic Sen. Joyce Elliott’s proposal to require racial impact statements for new criminal justice legislation. The impact statements would have provided research on whether proposed legislation would have a disparate impact on minority groups. Similar bills failed in 2013 and 2015, and this one was substantially amended to merely provide the impact statements as an option, but it died on the House floor. It was another reminder that for many white people, there is no greater insult than suggesting that they or something they do might be racist, even if the bias was unintended. One opponent, Rep. Ballinger, said he did not believe in systemic racism. — Lindsey Millar
are far less safe. There is no exception for incest or rape in the law. And, like previous laws passed by legislators who think their particular religious beliefs give them the right to control women, the law particularly harms women who can’t afford to travel to a more broad-minded jurisdiction to exercise a legal right. Another evil of the law is that it allows a spouse, parent or guardian to bring a civil suit against the abortion provider if the woman has “received or attempted to receive” dilation and evacuation. That means, according to abortion rights activists and Mayberry himself, a husband can stop an abortion. He may have committed rape. A parent
to “request the medical records of the pregnant woman relating directly to the entire pregnancy history of the woman.” No abortion may be performed until every chart for every pregnancy generated by the woman’s ob-gyn (or obgyns) and staffs and hospitals, every record generated during every trip to the ER she may have had to make, is supplied and reviewed by the abortion provider. Not only could that take a lot of time and generate a mountain of paperwork — what if the woman already had five children? — but it would also notify, perhaps against the woman’s will, her doctors and their staffs that she is seeking to obtain an abortion. The bill does not state what informa-
ABORTION Risking women’s health Women and their bodies were subjected to serious new insults this year by Arkansas legislators practicing medicine without a license. Among the most egregious laws was the so-called “dismemberment abortion” bill, now Act 45, whose chief sponsors were Rep. Andy Mayberry (R-Hensley) and Sen. David Sanders (R-Little Rock). The bill prohibits doctors from performing what doctors believe is the safest method of second trimester abortion: dilation and evacuation. The alternatives would be something akin to a Caesarean section, in which the belly is cut open to remove the fetus, or an induced abortion, which requires the woman to go into labor to expel a fetus killed by an injection of salt water, urea or potassium chloride into the amniotic sac. Those procedures are what doctors call “high morbidity” — meaning they have a high risk of making patients sick. Dilation and evacuation is recommended by the World Health Organization, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Medical Association. The difference between those organizations and the Arkansas legislature is that one group does not believe women should receive the best health care possible. But Mayberry and Sanders and their co-sponsors think D&E, which uses a vacuum, is tantamount to butchery. But hysterectomy and induction abortions accomplish the same end as a D&E and 18
APRIL 13, 2017
ARKANSAS TIMES
limitation,” and to collect an annual fee of $500. While purporting to be a bill to protect women’s health, the new law, Act 383, is designed to let the state shut down a clinic for facilities violations not spelled out in the legislation. It’s not clear what violation would close the clinic. Towel on the floor? Out of paper towels? Scoop left in the break room freezer’s icemaker? As it happens, Little Rock Family Planning is inspected frequently, more than the once every year that the law already called for. The health department inspected the clinic four times in 2016, citing such things as discolored ceiling tiles and a chair with rips. The clinic’s spokesman said some inspections are instigated by complaints from the anti-abortion protesters that picket outside. The vague language of Act 383 “has potential for abuse. We don’t know if we would be singled out and treated differently, if our license could be suspended for even minor paperwork violations,” the spokesman said. — Leslie Newell Peacock
TRANSPARENCY The public’s right to know took one step forward, two steps back. WARRIOR: Democratic Sen. Joyce Elliott of Little Rock eked out a win on some positive education bills, though many others were shot down.
may have committed incest. Doesn’t matter. Rep. Charlie Collins (R-Fayetteville) and Sen. Missy Irvin (R-Mountain View) brought us the bill that became Act 733, the so-called “sex-selection abortion ban.” Despite the fact that there is zero evidence that Arkansas women are dashing into abortion clinics because they’ve determined the sex of their fetus and don’t like it, the bill has the potential to create an huge burden on the doctor provider. Say a woman has had prenatal tests to see if her fetus has a genetic disorder. She learns there is a disorder and, by the way, the sex of the fetus. Her doctor must ask if she knows the gender of the fetus. If she answers that she does, the abortion must be delayed, because this new state law requires the doctor
tion in those records would suggest that the woman was hell-bent on not having another boy or girl. “Why are physicians and the clinic made to be an investigative party into a woman’s motives to have an abortion?” asked a spokesman for Little Rock Family Planning, the state’s only clinic that offers abortion up to 21 weeks. Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R-Elm Springs) and Sen. Scott Flippo (R-Bull Shoals), like Mayberry and Sanders, introduced what’s called a model TRAP law (targeted regulation of abortion providers) meant to end abortion by imposing stricter inspection regulations on clinics. The bill allows the state Department of Health to make yearly trips to inspect clinic records and “a representative sample of procedures”; to regulate all aspects of the clinic “without
Arkansas’s robust Freedom of Information Act came under assault in 2017 as never before, with legislators proposing at least a dozen new exemptions to the open records law. Thanks to SB 131, now Act 474, by Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R-Branch), security plans of the State Capitol Police are no longer disclosable to the public; Stubblefield’s reasoning was that someone seeking to do violence at the Capitol might request such plans, but the law is written so broadly that virtually any record of the Capitol police could fall under the new exemption. Stubblefield’s SB 12 (Act 541) created a similar exemption for schools, including colleges and universities. HB 1236, now Act 531, by Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R-Paragould), prevents the disclosure of a body-cam or dash-cam recording of the death of a law enforcement officer. Thankfully, though, many anti-FOIA bills failed. The most significant was SB 373, by Sen. Bart Hester (R-Cave Springs), which proposed exempting