From the Arkansas Advocate:
Efforts to build a “monument to the unborn” on the state Capitol grounds advocated by abortion opponents hit a new stumbling block Tuesday when the secretary of state began looking for new designs for the memorial.
The Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission voted with no dissent to allow Secretary of State Cole Jester to accept new submissions for the monument after the artist it selected in late 2023 applied for a federal copyright for her design. Jester said that move would interfere with the state’s efforts to market the anti-abortion monument.
“We couldn’t sell a Christmas tree ornament with it,” Jester said. “We couldn’t do so many things, and it would be very problematic.”
Arkansas was the first state to enact a law requiring such a monument and fundraising for it has struggled. The 2023 law called for a monument to mark the abortions that were performed in the state between the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide and the 2022 ruling overturning Roe.
The law states that Arkansans had at least 236,243 abortions between 1973 and 2022. An Arkansas law banning nearly all abortions took effect immediately with the court’s 2022 decision.
The commission had previously selected artist Lakey Goff’s idea of a “living wall” of flora and fauna for the monument and accepted her suggestion to place it in the grassy space behind the Capitol and to the north of the Supreme Court building.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas called the proposed monument “an offensive and inappropriate use of public space.”
“The decision whether to continue a pregnancy is deeply personal, and politicians should not use Capitol grounds to shame or stigmatize people for their private medical decisions,” ACLU spokesperson Megan Bailey said in a statement.
Jester told the Arts and Grounds Commission that moving forward with building the monument based on a private citizen’s copyrighted work would be “poor stewardship.”
Arkansas Right to Life, the state’s leading anti-abortion group, said in a statement that Goff is “a talented artist and a strong supporter of life” whose design was “regrettably” disqualified from public use.
Republican state Rep. Mary Bentley of Perryville and Sen. Kim Hammer of Benton, the sponsors of the law to create the monument, both supported the commission’s decision, Jester said. He also noted that Goff could resubmit a version of the Living Wall idea and the commission could select it again.
Goff told the Arkansas Advocate she has not yet decided whether to submit a new design. She said she was not aware until Tuesday’s meeting that the commission was considering moving on from her design.
She wanted to copyright her proposal so it would remain “true to my original inspiration and design, which came from the Lord, the Holy Spirit,” she said.
The proposal had an estimated $900,000 price tag, and Goff said in August 2025 that she expected to have raised a total of $100,000 for the project by the end of October. Act 310 established a trust fund to raise money through private gifts, grants and donations, and fundraising for the project began in May 2024.
The effort had raised $25,110 by August. That total is now about $28,000, Jester said Tuesday.
Commissioner Stephen Bright, a former state representative and the Secretary of State’s Chief Taxpayer Services Officer, told the New York Times last year that he hoped to change the design to reduce its cost to about $700,000. The design would be unchangeable once copyrighted.
Jester’s office will accept new submissions until March 14.
Earlier this year, the Texas Legislature passed its own law to install an abortion-related monument on Capitol grounds, also with private funds. The bronze sculpture would replicate the National Life Monument originally installed in Rome. A copy of the sculpture is on display in Washington, D.C.
