According to a statement on its website, Arkansas’ only licensed surgical abortion facility — which, as far as Family Council can tell, has not performed any abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade last June — will officially close effective Thursday, September 1.
Little Rock Family Planning Services has operated at different locations since 1973. It has utilized its current facility in west Little Rock since the late 1990s, and tens of thousands of unborn children have been aborted at the facility during that time.
Over the years, Family Council has reported on various incidents at the facility — including ambulance transports and close calls between pro-lifers and vehicles outside the location. In 2021 we wrote about a group of pro-life protesters charged with trespassing at the facility.
For many years pro-lifers have gathered regularly outside the facility to peacefully pray that abortion would end and that the surgical abortion facility would close. That finally is happening.
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On Friday, June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. Within hours, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge certified that, according to state law, abortion is prohibited in Arkansas except when the mother’s life is at risk — effectively ending abortion in Arkansas immediately.
Over the next few weeks, attorneys for Little Rock Family Planning Services and Planned Parenthood quietly dropped federal lawsuits against pro-life legislation that Arkansas had enacted. Now Little Rock Family Planning Services is closing, and Planned Parenthood has been forced to stop performing abortions at its facility.
The statement on Little Rock Family Planning Services’ website calls the closure “temporary,” but it’s difficult to imagine that any abortion facility will be able to operate in Arkansas thanks to the good, pro-life laws that legislators have enacted.
In the meantime, pro-life efforts in Arkansas have shifted from making abortion illegal to making it irrelevant and unthinkable.
As we said back in June, overturning Roe v. Wade is a huge victory — but there is still work to do.
LifeNews Note: Jerry Cox is the president of the Arkansas Family Council.
