Page:Arkansas Women's Political Caucus v. Riviere.pdf/9

Rh misleading. Yet if any word would quickly excite the hearts of the temperance advocates and opponents during the days of prohibition, it was that word. We had no difficulty approving the title, and it did not explain what the act was about.

I will not discuss all the uses of the phrase "unborn child" that routinely occur in dictionaries and law books. I merely note that it is an ordinary phrase that has been in use for years. Union Pacific Railroad Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250 (1891); Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1980); Arkansas Digest, Descriptive Word Index, Vol. 1B, p. 577; West's Modern Federal Practice Digest, 2nd, Descriptive Word Index, Vol. 92, p. 476.

Most of the petitioner's argument centers on this phrase and the fact that the amendment attempts to alter or change what was said in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). It is argued that the phrase "unborn child" is meaningless because a fetus, during the first three months of pregnancy, is not a "person;" therefore, unborn child is not accurate either legally or scientifically. Assuming that to be true, how many people know that? Should the amendment be called the conceptus amendment, because it defines an unborn child as being from conception? That would be nonsense. Whatever the United States Supreme Court held in Roe v. Wade, supra, in terms of defining what a person is constitutionally, is irrelevant to the question before us at this time.

In my judgment, the title is actually not what is objectionable to the petitioner; it is the whole amendment that it finds repulsive. I appreciate and respect the petitioner's legal and moral objections to the proposed amendment. All or part of the amendment may be illegal, but that is not the issue before us. We cannot inject ourselves into the ideological differences of the parties and, by so doing, interfere with the constitutional right of the people to vote on the amendment. Amendment 7 is the only means by which the people can choose the law they want, rather than be governed by a law the governor or legislature may want. Our role is only to see that the proposal meets the minimum requirement of sufficiency. Our duty is clear. We must