As vote totals start coming in in Arkansas, I would be surprised if Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Chris Jones don’t win their primaries. Huckabee Sanders would be a heavy favorite to win in the fall. Abortion is shaping up to be an important issue though, and Arkansas voters, more than other Americans as a whole, are anti-abortion. State Sen. Jason Rapert, who is running for lieutenant governor, sponsored an abortion ban signed into law last year that would go into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The ban does not make exceptions for cases of rape or incest. “How could we look at any human baby and say that they are not worthy of life simply because their birth was a result of a violent act,” Rapert has said. The state’s current Attorney General, Leslie Rutledge, is running against him and touting her anti-abortion credentials in the race. Gov. Asa Hutchinson has said the lack of exceptions for victims of rape and incest should be revisited if the law went into effect. Huckabee Sanders has said she would “not push for any exceptions.” As in many deeply red states with anti-abortion populations, the questions for voters will be not whether they ban abortion in a post-Roe world, but how extreme their bans will be.
