Arkansas Code Title 20. Public Health and Welfare § 20-16-1902. Legislative findings and purpose

(A) The victims of sex-selection abortion are overwhelmingly female;

(B) A sex-selection abortion is used to prevent the birth of a child of an undesired sex;

(C) The United States, along with other countries, has petitioned the United Nations General Assembly to declare sex-selection abortion a crime against women;

(D) Countries such as India, Great Britain, and China have taken steps to end sex-selection abortions;

(E) Women are a vital part of our society and culture and possess the same fundamental human rights as men;

(F) The United States prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in various areas, including employment, education, athletics, and health insurance;

(G) It is undesirable to have a distortion in the sex ratio within a society, particularly when there is a shortage of women; and

(H) Countries with high rates of male preference have experienced ill effects as a result of having an increasing population of young, unmarried men; and

(A) It is undisputed that abortion risks to maternal health increase as gestation increases;

(B) The risk of death for pregnant women at eight (8) weeks' gestation is one (1) death per one million (1,000,000) and rises to:

(C) A woman is thirty-five (35) times more likely to die from an abortion performed at twenty (20) weeks' gestation than she would have been had the abortion been performed in the first trimester;

(D) A woman is ninety-one (91) times more likely to die from an abortion performed at twenty-one (21) weeks' gestation or later than she would have been had the abortion been performed in the first trimester; and

(E) Because abortions performed solely based on the sex of a child are generally performed later in pregnancy, women undergoing these abortions are unnecessarily exposed to increased health risks, including an exponentially higher risk of death.