For the ‘most pro-life state in America,’ Arkansas sure is burying a lot of women and babies

Arkansas ranks second-worst among the states for infant mortality and fourth-worst for maternal mortality, period, full stop. Take it from the experts at the March of Dimes: When it comes to the health of babies and young women, this is a very dangerous place to be.

And we know that more than 90% of Arkansas’ maternal deaths in recent years could have been prevented if women had easier access to healthcare. It’s a horrifying stat that would certainly be ameliorated by extending Medicaid for new moms for a full year after birth, as every other state in the country has done.

Alas, this no-brainer solution is one that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has stubbornly and repeatedly refused to implement. Even attempts by fellow Republicans including college pal and state Sen. Breanne Davis and state Rep. Aaron Pilkingon couldn’t lure Sanders down from this monstrous hill she’s clearly willing to let Arkansas mothers die on.

And so it is with acute nausea that we watch Sanders spin and crow today about a dubious honorific bestowed by a dubious anti-abortion group that prizes the wellbeing of nonviable fetuses over the living, breathing mothers and their offspring who might survive if only we help with medical appointments and doctors’ bills.

“On Wednesday, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders joined Americans United for Life and the Arkansas Family Council to announce that Arkansas ranked the most pro-life state in America for the seventh year in a row, according to annual rankings released by Americans United for Life. The pro-life organization ranks all 50 states based on state laws that protect the unborn, the elderly, the disabled, and the terminally ill,” the press release from the Governor’s Office said. 

We suspect the hungry elderly folks who nearly lost their Meals on Wheels services to state funding cuts, only to be saved after lots of bad press and angry pushback, and the legion of families languishing on a waitlist for services for their disabled children, might question Americans United for Life’s rosy assessment of Arkansas’ dedication to marginalized groups. 

The women whose pregnancies went sideways enough to put their lives at risk but who could not get the abortion they needed to survive and were forced to flee the state to procure emergency care, will surely cry foul.

Not the governor, though. Her news release boasts about the punishing pile of laws with which conservatives have smothered women in want or need of reproductive healthcare:

Over the last 53 years, Arkansas has passed more than 65 laws to protect human life in the womb, and in 2021, the law prohibiting abortion except to save the mother’s life became effective when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in the landmark case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center. 

Since taking office, Governor Sanders has signed several additional laws to strengthen Arkansas’ pro-life protections, including Act 973 of 2025 to prohibit abortions performed due to an unborn child’s race, Act 485 of 2025 to prohibit giving a pregnant woman abortion drugs without her consent, Act 1006 of 2025, Act 125 of 2024, and Act 622 of 2023 to provide $5 million to support women with unplanned pregnancies.

Despite this hoopla over our draconian abortion ban, Arkansans are still outsmarting their ghoulish fundamentalist overlords, procuring medications by mail that let them manage their own abortions at home, or hopping state lines to get the procedure doctors can no longer perform here. But we’ll give it to the anti-abortion crowd, it’s certainly less convenient and more expensive to pull off now. 

If we were the ones giving this award for the most pro-life state in the union, we’d go with facts and hard numbers. Congratulations to Gavin Newsom’s California, where only 10 women die per 100,000 live births. Compare that to Arkansas, where 35 women die per 100,000 live births. 

And hats off to North Dakota, where fewer than three infants die per 1,000 live births. In Arkansas, that stat is closer to nine. 

So, what are we celebrating again?