A federal judge last week blocked four new pro-life laws from taking effect in Arkansas. U.S. District Court Judge Kristine Baker of the Eastern District of Arkansas is considered an activist judge by the group National Right to Life. Leslie Rutledge, the state’s attorney general, has said she plans to appeal Baker’s ruling, reports the Associated Press. Three of the new restrictions were set to go into effect Tuesday before being blocked late Friday night by Baker’s preliminary injunction. The laws were challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of a Little Rock abortion provider. Among the new laws is the state’s Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. Seven states– Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas–currently forbid dismemberment abortion. The procedure involves using “sharp metal clamps and scissors to crush, tear and pulverize living unborn human beings, to rip heads and legs off of tiny torsos until the defenseless child bleeds to death,” according to news editor Dave Andrusko of National Right to Life in a report for National Right to Life News Today. Another law imposes new restrictions on the disposal of the remains of aborted babies, and another…
Read the full story