State bills address groceries, abortions

LITTLE ROCK — Correction: A bill filed Monday in the state Legislature would ban abortions once a fetus has a heartbeat. The state Department of Health would set rules defining the method used to determine whether a fetus has a heartbeat. There were 4,033 abortions performed in Arkansas in 2011, according to the Health Department. This story misstated the department involved.

A proposal to one day cut the sales tax on groceries in Arkansas was filed Monday.

The plan is dependent on paying off or reducing bond obligations that won’t end for years or resolving a decades old lawsuit that requires the state to pay millions for desegregation efforts.

Under Senate Bill 135 by Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Bigelow, the state’s chief fiscal officer could trigger the near end of the sales tax on groceries if a combination of the bond obligations and school desegregation costs has dropped by $35 million or more for six straight months.

Gov. Mike Beebe has pushed for the gradual decline of the state’s sales tax on groceries since he was elected in 2006. The tax has since been lowered from 6 percent to 1.5 percent. The 2013 legislative session will be Beebe’s last full session as governor and he has said there is not money in the state budget to eliminate more of the tax this year.

A one-eighth percent tax on groceries is required by Amendment 75 of the state constitution for conservation matters such as the Game and Fish Commission and would not be removed.

Local governments would still be allowed to tax groceries.

Another bill filed Monday would ban abortions once a fetus has a heartbeat.

Senate Bill 134 by Rapert would prohibit a doctor from performing an abortion if the fetus has a heartbeat, except to save the mother’s life or in cases where pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Doctors violating the law would be guilty of a Class D felony, punishable by up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, an embryo begins forming a heart at four weeks, and the heart beats by eight weeks.

“When there is a living, beating heart, there is life,” Rapert said.

The state Department of Health and Human Services would set rules defining the method used to determine whether a fetus has a heartbeat.

There were 4,033 abortions performed in Arkansas in 2011,according to the Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services.

Of all abortions in the state, 33 percent took place before seven weeks of pregnancy, 53.43 percent between seven and 14 weeks, and 13.46 percent between 14 and 21 weeks. Two abortions occurred after 21 weeks, according to the department.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland lobbyist Murry Newbern called the bill extreme legislation that undermines a woman’s ability to make her own decision.

“There are many possible outcomes of pregnancy, including fetal development issues that cannot be detected in the first six weeks. Complications during pregnancy could put a woman’s life in danger and this bill would leave her without legal medical options to save her life,” she said.

Similar legislation has been filed in Mississippi and Wyoming.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision stated that a woman can legally have an abortion until the fetus is viable enough to live outside the mother, generally around the third trimester.

Also Monday, Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, filed a bill to change the Arkansas School Choice Act.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments about the constitutionality of the law in St. Louis on Jan. 17 after a lower court threw out the entire school-choice law last summer. That ruling has since been stayed.

The School Choice Act allowed students to transfer out of their resident school districts with few exceptions. But it states: “No student may transfer to a nonresident district where the percentage of enrollment for the student’s race exceeds that percentage in the student’s resident district.”

Hammer said he thinks his bill, House Bill 1181, would be constitutional because it doesn’t determine if a child can change schools based on the racial mix of the districts. Instead, a superintendent would decide whether to accept a student based on how it would affect the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches under the National School Lunch Act.