It was a grand occasion Sunday on the steps of Arkansas' state Capitol. For the state's pro-life community turned out in force to protest the U.S. Supreme Court's decision some 45 years ago to declare the slaughter of babes in the womb a constitutional right. That court's pro-death decision in Roe v. Wade has gone down alongside Dred Scott as one of the grave injustices of American jurisprudence. But not without protest, as various signs displayed at this rally testified. "Unborn lives matter," read one. Another, in yellow and black, read simply: "Choose life."
Dignitaries aplenty crowded the Capitol steps, including Governor Asa Hutchinson. The governor noted that Americans United for Life had named Arkansas one of the states where abortion is opposed by law, custom and just plain decency. "We have achieved that [status]," the governor declared, "because we believe in the life of the unborn."
But the governor hastened to add that "there is always more work to do." And how. The governor took pride in his having ended some funding for Planned Parenthood in this state. He also mentioned that last year the Legislature had banned a barbaric procedure that destroys the developing baby before he or she can glimpse the first light of day.
This year, the rally's keynote speaker was the attorney general of Arkansas, the Hon. Leslie Rutledge, who prophesied: "One day our country will find its way back to protecting the sanctity of life for the unborn." Her presence at the rally was as conspicuous as the absence of a Roman Catholic bishop, Anthony Taylor.
The bishop noted that while Attorney General Rutledge's credentials as a critic of abortion were solid, her defense of the death penalty should have disqualified her for any role in a pro-life rally. Because the Holy Mother Church "teaches a consistent ethic of life in which life and human dignity must be protected from the first moment of conception to natural death and every stage in between." Whether you agree or disagree with the good bishop, it was good to see such a profusion of opinions expressed.
To quote one of the attendees, Camille Richoux, the state's attorney general was being hypocritical when she marched for life because she's defended the state's practice of executing prison inmates on Death Row. So some of the protesters who turned out for this rally found their own protest protested.
Such ironies abounded at the rally. To quote Ms. Richoux's sign: The death penalty is pro-death, racist and inhumane. As it happens, she was also a leader of the Arkansas Coalition for Reproductive Justice, which has less to do with human reproduction than preventing it. The debate between life and death in this state abounds with such oxymorons. And with ironies in general. March on!
Editorial on 01/24/2018