A constitutional abortion amendment will not be on the ballot in Arkansas this November after the state’s Supreme Court upheld state officials’ refusal to count signatures submitted without proper paperwork.

Background
In Arkansas, proposed ballot measures must receive at least 90,704 valid signatures from 50 counties to actually appear on the ballot.

Arkansas for Limited Government (AFLG) reportedly collected 101,000 signatures in favor of a constitutional amendment that would have made abortion legal up to 18 weeks gestation, or in cases of:

• Pregnancy threatening the mother’s life or health;
• Rape and incest;
• The baby being unlikely to survive birth.
  

As the Daily Citizen previously reported, the amendment’s acceptance of aborting pregnancies threatening the mother’s “health” — a broad, undefined term — would have formed a loophole allowing late-term abortions.

AFLG submitted its signatures for validation on July 5, but there was a problem. Arkansas’ Secretary of State, Jim Thurston, invalidated more than 3,000 signatures after finding AFLG had failed to submit paperwork properly certifying people paid to collect signatures.

AFLG brought the case to the Arkansas Supreme Court after Thurston refused to accept the necessary paperwork after the deadline.

One of my earliest memories is of my dad reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy to my sisters and me before bedtime. I must have been about five, growing up in San Diego in the 1960s — but vicariously experiencing life on a New York farm a hundred years earlier.

The farmer boy of the title was Almanzo Wilder, who grew up and married Laura Ingalls.

I vividly remember scenes from the book as Wilder describes Almanzo’s family and his early life as he trains a young pair of oxen to pull a load; worries about his schoolteacher being thrashed by a group of big boys; makes ice cream with his siblings while his parents are out of town; and raises an enormous, milk-fed pumpkin.

Despite the fact that Wilder’s books have been read by millions and are classic children’s literature, she was canceled by officials at the American Library Association in 2018. The ALA dropped Wilder’s name from a medal given to honor significant authors and illustrators of children’s literature.

Her crime? Despite how accurately and grippingly she wrote about life in a different era, her books were “inconsistent” with the ALA’s “core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness.”

As I grew up, we always had books around the house, and I read voraciously. My first-grade class had a reading contest, and I read more than 140 books.

As we think about the health of family in the United States, we must understand the nature of family formation trends. What decisions are Americans making about their intimate lives, living situations and the kinds of relationships they are choosing to develop?

Marriage is the mortar that holds a healthy, thriving, growing community together. That is a fundamental sociological truth. When marriage declines, family declines. When family declines, children, women, men and society itself suffers.

So, we must ask “Is marriage growing or declining in America today?” The stats are clear and it is not an encouraging story. Following is an offering of some of the best and most recent academic and government sources tracking marriage formation trends using various measures.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports (May 2024) that married-couple households made up 47% of all U.S. households in 2022, down from 71% in 1970.

The National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University notes the U.S. marriage rate has declined 54% from 1900 to today. That rate peaked in 1920 at 92.3, almost triple the 2022 rate.

This is an extremely disturbing cultural indicator.

University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox, in his important 2024 book Get Married: Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization, asserts marriage rates in America have hit an all-time low.

When Christopher Columbus and his one-hundred-men crew pushed off from Palos de la Frontera, Spain in search of a western sea route to Asia in 1492, many weren’t so sure they’d ever see him again.

The Italian-born explorer had lobbied earnestly for funding for the trip, and was turned down by Portugal, England and France. Spain finally agreed to back him, but navigating unchartered waters in the fifteenth century was harrowing and, at times, horrifying and deadly.

As it turned out, the journey took Columbus much longer than he had anticipated.

In total, it was two months and nine days before he landed in the Bahamas and nowhere near Asia. But he had discovered the New World, and that was plenty enough for the trip to be deemed historic and successful.

Like all explorers, Columbus kept a log of his days on the ocean. At one point, he sailed for 33 days straight.

Yet if you reviewed his journal, you know how the most common entry reads?

“Today, we sailed on.”

As we consider our place and role in this broken world – the challenges of a dysfunctional culture that champions and celebrates death, mocks the light of Christ and demonizes Christians — Columbus’ words resonate.

Today, we sail on.