Arkansas isn’t the capitol for great care for children. Yet, a commission was asked to choose a memorial on the state Capitol grounds for aborted babies.

They chose the less offensive one, thank goodness

The commission chose the lesser of two offensive ones, this one pictured above, will have living plants. The memorial was called for in a bill passed by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ legislature. Two Republican legislators voted with Democrats to oppose the measure.

Pro-life but not pro childcare?

I don’t see how a legislature and governor who purport to be pro-life can have such an abysmal record when it comes to care for living children. Arkansas has the nation’s highest maternal death rate during pregnancy. It has the highest rate of those living with food insecurity. And it set a record in knocking some 427,000 off Medicaid during the post-Pandemic wind-down. Of those, at least 151,000 were children.

The abortion law in Arkansas prohibits abortion unless necessary to save the life of the mother.

The Medicaid wind-down

While the Medicaid wind-down was needed after the Pandemic, Arkansas wanted to speed up the process. Many were cut due to address and phone changes and simply not getting the message to re-qualify. This has been a particularly tough issue in rural areas and may impact the viability of some rural hospitals.

Memorial not financed with public money

The memorial is not being financed, thank goodness, with tax dollars. Instead, a trust has been established. The word this week, though, is that no one has donated so far.

One commissioner abstained

The Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission has been charged with selecting the memorial and finding a place for it. Apparently it will go into an area that now houses air conditioning units.

But Tony Leraris, who expressed his frustration with the commission’s task, was the sole member to verbally abstain from voting. Leraris said Capitol monuments should be for military and government-related things. However, Leraris said he “could live with” the commission’s recommendation because the wall was the “most tasteful” of the designs, many of which he “found repulsive.”

“Personally, I just don’t know how you tastefully immortalize an aborted fetus…I just find the whole subject matter almost unspeakable and to think that we’ve got to put a monument up on the Capitol grounds to immortalize this…I just can’t see that this subject matter is something that we need to be doing,” Leraris said.

The fetus option

An option not chosen was a bronze of a fetus wrapped in an umbilical cord on a pedestal. Of that, Leraris said,

“As much as I’m not in favor of any of this, I do have to say that of what I’ve seen, [the living wall] is the least offensive to me,” Leraris said. “I mean when I saw the crypt and I saw that umbilical cord coming out of the ground with a baby in it, I just thought, it’s not going to take me much to throw up.”

And another commissioner

Commissioner Beth Gipe voted for the living wall and said if the commission had to make a selection, it should “at least be beautiful and not tragic. It’s the least offensive if we have to answer this charge.”

The Living Wall idea

Arkansas artist Lakey Goff proposed the living wall. In an email to the secretary of state’s office, Goff pointed to a similar installation at Liberty Park, which overlooks the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. She said “living walls are healing, innovative and inspiring.”

Let’s hope so

We hope she’s right. However, I’d prefer this idea die a slow death from a lack of funds to build the monument. And let’s hope the legislature tackles more pressing problems for the children of Arkansas.