On outdated policies

Last Tuesday, Attorney General Tim Griffin rejected the ballot initiative and proposed title for the Arkansas Reproductive Healthcare Amendment. Among his “concerns”—though apparently it wasn’t one of the reasons he rejected the proposed measure—was that the proposal should have addressed the impact to Constitutional Amendment 68 concerning abortion, concluding that “it seems plausible that even if your proposal were enacted in its current form, portions of Amendment 68 would remain.”

That is disrespectful to voters, and too reverent of Amendment 68.

Amendment 68 (adopted in 1988) is titled “Abortion” and has three sections: (1) requiring no public funds be used to pay for any abortion, except to save the mother’s life, (2) a statement that Arkansas’ policy concerning abortion is to protect the life of every unborn child from conception until birth, to the extent permitted by the federal Constitution, and (3) an unrelated section concerning contraception and appropriations.

That’s it, in almost as many words. Except for the restriction on public funds in section one, it is essentially a restatement of the federal Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which establishes that the Constitution and federal laws made pursuant to it constitute the “supreme Law of the Land” and thus take priority over any conflicting state laws. It provides that state courts are bound by, and state constitutions subordinate to, the supreme law. The fact of Amendment 68’s irrelevance compared to the Supremacy Clause can be illustrated by the fact that the Arkansas abortion trigger law that recently went into effect would have the same legal effect with or without it!

So, A.G. Griffin, stop pretending that 68 is anything more than it really is, a piece of now drastically outdated policy which will be overruled by the policy implications of the Arkansas Reproductive Healthcare Amendment when it passes.

NICHOLAS CAFFREY

Fayetteville