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Welcome to Arkansas week.

I'm Christina Munoz, a legislative session is on the horizon and a trigger law has outlawed most abortions in Arkansas.

We'll talk about those today with a very special guest Governor ASA Hutchinson.

Governor.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

Great to be with you.

Thanks for the opportunity and we have a lot to get to so we are going to get straight to it.

So first this special session we've been talking about it for a while now, So what is the latest information on when this might actually happen?

Well, in you're correct, we have been discussing it for some time.

Before you call a special session, which is the authority of the governor.

To do that, you want to make sure that there's broad agreement on what we need to do with the General Assembly, and so I've been meeting with the the leadership of the General Assembly, talking to Members trying to arrive at the right approach, because what we're trying to do is simply to put more money in people's pockets.

So that as they face higher energy costs, gas prices, inflation that they have more spendable income and we're actually collecting more in revenue for the state than we need to collect to provide the services.

So we ought to be able to return that to them, so we just try and derive an agreement on the exactly the right approach.

I put out some other ideas of things that we can use with our historic surplus in revenue.

But the legislature understandably wants to save many of these items for next year, so we're still trying to reach an agreement.

The things we've talked about are tax cuts to put more money in people's pockets, I raise the issue of teacher pay that needs to be addressed now or down the road, and then we have the most recent issue with the reversal of Roe versus Wade and what needs to be done to help on adoption services.

To make sure that we're providing as a state to support for maternal health needs, as that might increase as a result of this decision.

Very good, and we're going to get into all of that in just a moment.

But when you talk about more money in the pockets of our cans and that is good news for everybody in the state and everybody watching and listening in talk about what your desired plan would be for that is it to speed up the tax cuts already in progress.

That's correct, right now we have a 5.3% tax rate that's been reduced for individuals from originally at 7%, so we've already reduced it dramatically.

But we also have a plan that the legislature passed to reduce it overtime down to 4.9%, and this would be like in 2026.

So the plan would be simply to accelerate that reduction so that it could take effect.

This year people could adjust their withholding tables and again have more money in their pockets.

This year that's the objective and there is broad consensus that that's a good plan.

There were other ideas out there, but that's the simplest we can afford to do that.

And right now we're closing out the year with $1.6 billion surplus.

And so we have sufficient reserves that we can make sure we can continue to provide services that are needed and still accelerate the reduction of those tax cuts.

Very good, and so we're going to move over to Roe V Wade as you have already mentioned, the trigger law that took effect in Arkansas on the day that the Roe V Wade was reversed has been called one of the most restrictive abortion laws when it comes to these state laws that are out there.

How does that make you feel when you hear that that?

That's kind of the assessment going on?

Well, anytime that you can save lives of the unborn that you can shift our culture into more pro-life protections, then that's a very good thing, and I rejoice in that whenever you look at the fact that I've been engaged in the political arena for over 30 years, and through that time we've talked about the reversal of Roe versus Wade that it was wrongly decided that the authority on these public health matters should be reserved to the states under our.

Constitution all of a sudden, the Supreme Court agreed with that, and so that's a big victory for the pro-life movement for protecting unborn.

You know the what we want to also address, and this is not something that's new all of a sudden.

We say well, because we're gonna put restrictions on abortion that somehow we're waking up and that we need to do more for adoption services or maternal healthcare.

We started this some time ago and we've enhanced our coverage.

We've expanded Medicaid coverage in Arkansas, but we always need to do more, particularly with the increased number that will likely be seeking these services so.

It's a good day there.

Obviously it's gonna be filled with controversy.

There's gonna be other states that take different directions and I might not agree with every aspect of the law, but it does protect life.

And that's why I signed that law the last session.

And you mentioned other states that may be going down different roads and we have one senator, Senator Jason Rapert, that has already talked about the possibility of making it difficult for someone to get an abortion in another state.

Do you support those concepts or those ideas?

I don't and the reason is that we have a constitution to follow, and as the conservative Supreme Court recited in their opinion, I think they almost anticipated that argument and said, this doesn't mean there should be restrictions on our freedom to travel.

And so people all across the United States.

You know, we have people that are traveling to healthcare out of states for various reasons, and I don't see a constitutional.

Basis for restricting the freedom of travel, even though it might be traveling for a purpose that's not supporting the policy of Arkansas.

And so I don't see that as constitutional.

I think the Supreme Court of the United States indicated that as well, we're going to have to have time to adjust to this, and so let's focus on now that abortion is very restricted in Arkansas, let's make this successful in terms of adoption alternatives, services that provided greater education, it's going to take some resources to do that.

And, and I think that's.

The most important direction that we can take.

And I'm curious to know about enforcement of this.

We're talking about anyone who performs or attempts to provide an abortion with up to $1000 fine and or prison time of up to 10 years.

Where does enforcement of this new law fall?

What's very important to remember that first of all, any penalties are not directed at the woman.

All the penalties are to the abortion provider that might violate the law and it is a felony and includes a fine, as you noted and the law is enforced just like any other law, so that if a complaint is filed that somebody is not following, it is referred to the prosecuting attorney or law enforcement agency that would do an investigation to determine whether there is a law that's violated and whether charges should be filed.

I'm pleased that since the decision came down, and since the Attorney General Leslie Rutledge certified, that the law is now triggered, that puts these restrictions in place, that we have information that our traditional abortion provider here in Arkansas has complied with the law have ceased the abortions for those instances, which would not be in compliance.

And so we expect people to follow the law.

We have complaints that that's not the case, then it'll be handled just like any other violation of the law.

So you mentioned that it may not be perfect, it is what it is right now and it does have an exception for the life of the mother, but none for rape or incest.

And I'm curious to know how you feel about that as well as when we get into in vitro fertilization, reproductive rights and things of those nature.

What can you tell us about the Arkansas law with regard to those topics?

Well, I have historically supported the exceptions of rape and incest because the conception is based upon a criminal act and I can.

I certainly agree that these are hard cases because you've got many times a young woman that's involved.

That's the victim of this, and our answer should be that we're going to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law the perpetrator.

Secondly, we want to provide.

Services and help as much as we can through those difficult circumstances.

While I would have preferred those exceptions to be in place, that was clearly not the will of the General Assembly and and so the law recognizes 1 exception, which is the life of the mother.

And so we're going to do all we can to protect the life.

Both the mom and the unborn child.

And that's the public policy of Arkansas that's broadly accepted.

So we're going to do that.

The other part of your question is about all of the other what ifs.

I think it's really important just simply to make a distinction when it comes to contraceptive services.

There is no ban in Arkansas.

I fully support that.

The Legislature fully supports the contraceptives, have not touched a is not touched based upon this recent decision and the trigger law.

If it is an abortion services then that is impacted by it.

And so you have to make those two distinctions, and women should be assured that they're going to have access to contraceptive services as they always have.

We want to be able to support that.

It's just simply the prohibitions on taking that life of the unborn.

Well, governor, as your time starts to wind down as governor of the state, I want to say thank you for your time and service.

I know it was probably not what you envisioned.

When you get a global pandemic while you happen to be leader of this state.

So thank you for all you have done and thank you for your time here today.

It's great to have the conversation with you and we look forward to continue serving out the rest of my term with a lot of energy.

Thank you.

Absolutely thank you so much for joining us.

Next up, we'll talk with attorney Bettina Brownstein to get a pro choice perspective on what the new abortion law means for Arkansas women.

Welcome back, our next guest is an attorney who has worked extensively with ACLU, Arkansas, but Tina Brownstein Batina thank you so much for joining us here today.

Thank you for having me.

I want to start just with a little bit of reaction and a legal terms.

What has been your reaction to the legal status now of abortion in Arkansas?

Well, legally it couldn't be worse for a woman who's seeking to.

To get an abortion for any other reason other than to save a lot of her own life.

It is a.

It's been called one of the more extensive measures when it comes to all the States and who's doing what right now with reaction to Roe versus Wade being overturned.

And so I'm curious if you can tell us what it means, mostly with regard to the law.

If someone tried having an abortion or doing an abortion in Arkansas, what would happen?

Well, Arkansas law among all the states is as restrictive as prohibitive, as much of a ban as any other anti abortion or abortion ban law in the country.

So it absolutely bans an abortion for any reason other than to save the life of the mother and to save the life of the mother means physical life.

If the mother is.

Has some psychological distress, mental distress.

It's even suicidal.

That's not a reason under this law to permit an abortion.

So Arkansas ban is virtually a complete ban.

OK, so let's get into.

So what it means for women seeking an abortion is.

You're going to have to go out of state.

Or find a way to get an abortion that is not going to be discovered.

By the.

By prosecutors are who may attempt to afford to enforce this law or otherwise face legal ramifications for sure, and so I'm curious to know there's been a lot of talk.

A lot of questions, a lot of concern about some other types of procedures like ectopic pregnancies, DNC with regard to miscarriage.

What can you tell Arkansas and Arkansas women about those kinds of procedures moving forward?

First of all, I do want to clarify something under the ACT 180.

Women are not to be criminally held liable, are not to be prosecuted criminally, at least as of now, the woman seeking an abortion does not face criminal liability.

It is the ones who are assisting her to get an abortion or provide an abortion.

Who would be facing criminal penalties up to $100,000 and or 10 years in prison?

So to answer your question.

The law itself, the ACT itself says that an ectopic present pregnancy is not considered a pregnancy for abortion for an abortion, so that if it is, the law would be if you have an ectopic pregnancy, a doctor would be permitted to abort that fetus.

In that case, although.

There's certain, even though the law I think is fairly clear in that regard, there's so much fear generated by this law among people who provide abortions, or doctors who may be confronted with a woman with a medical condition who is pregnant, that there is.

There is so much fear that there is going to be a lot of hesitancy to do procedures to improve or save the health of the mother, even though it might be permitted under the law, that won't be done by medical providers.

Simply because of fear.

Because the penalties are so draconian.

I don't think I answered part of your question, not the entire question.

If you want to repeat it as far as miscarriage or DNC goes, sometimes those are categorized under abortion.

It's the same the be the same problem, although under the law.

If you're not intending to abort a fetus, or you don't reasonably think that what you're doing would would have consequences to an abort and a fetus, and it's then arguably you would have a defense to any prosecution for performing a miscarriage.

You know treating a miscarriage or or other treatment, but.

Then again, there's that area of uncertainty and there's that fear of selness zealousness by some prosecutors and by state legislators.

Who will you know promote prosecution for this kind of incidents that makes the medical provider fear for what I think would be and prevent them and interfere with them doing what would be in the best interest of the of the mother's health wise.

And as we begin to wrap up here.

You anticipators see when you look down the road and into the future, either a change in that state law.

If there's a change in leadership and or at the federal level if a federal law could come into play.

How does that work for the states?

A federal law Trump Trump's state law.

If the Congress were to pass a law that made it a right for women to have an abortion.

I don't know exactly what that law would look like, but if they did, then of course that would Trump state law.

And so women in Arkansas would be permitted to have an abortion.

Well now it was far as state law is concerned.

I don't see anything time soon.

Any changes in our state law.

I do think that for women women have to be concerned about this.

Of course, women have to be outraged about it.

I think they're taking away this very, very fundamental right of women to decide when to have a child or if to have a child which is so integral to to to being a woman.

Being a citizen in this country, I think women we have to change the the the people who are elected in this state.

That's the only way we're going to make changes in the abortion law.

I think it's absolutely vital that we elect people who do not allow religion to dictate the laws for women, and I believe that's what's happening here.

It's it's, in my opinion, it's a fundamentalist Christian and Catholic theology that is taking precedence over health, health, and the rights of women in this state will no doubt a conversation that will continue for years to come.

I want to say a special thank you to Miss Brownstein.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

We very much appreciate your time.

You're welcome, thank you.

And now we'll end the show with something sweet, as good roots takes us to Barnhill orchards bemus honey bee farms and Bernice Garden farmers market.

The sweet life of small family owned businesses.

That's our topic today.

There's nothing quite as sweet as an Arkansas Strawberry in peak season.

I'm Lauren McCullough and this next episode of Good Roots.

We traveled to Lone Oak County and pick berries with an Arkansas farming legend.

Mr Bob Barnhill, the customer with us is always right.

We'll discuss family, community and what keeps him so motivated.

Then the sweetness continues as we head to a honey bee farm where a couple has made it their mission to educate the public about bees.

Let's go see if I can find Mr. Barnhill.

How are y'all?

I'm good.

What can I get you today?

I am Tori Barnhill and I'm at the corner market today.

Selling some strawberries.

Would you like this in the back or up here with you here at Barnhill Orchards we are a family owned and operated my dad Rex.

He is the farmer here at Barnhill Orchards and my Aunt Echo she is in charge of all the communications and sales.

My grandfather people ask about him all the time.

He sets up the table he sells to customers and everyone just looks for the old man.

$16.00 well back in February, dad turned 90 and he's still got the desire and they want to I I can't keep him out of town.

He just loves to go to town, but he's still boss.

This all started back in 1980.

He he retired out of the Air Force and we've been farming ever since.

The popularity of the strawberry here in Arkansas has risen quite a bit, and to me it it's the quality of the Berry that we're producing in this area.

It's it's much better than.

Something you're gonna buy in a grocery store.

It's dead right ready to eat.

Best you ever put in your mouth.

Plus the local communities support us.

They're realizing the value of it and and of course, I'm here to support them.

All right, Mr. Barnhill is that.

Is that about right?

Yes, it looks good.

Little more be sure to heat them up because the customers like to have a real full basket.

So what makes the perfect strawberry perfect?

Strawberry wants to be picked when it's deep colored red.

We picked the strawberries every other day.

Half the field one day and the other half the next day.

Now it has very little shelf life.

You've got the picket sell it.

They've got to take it home and eat it.

And in about in a matter of three days.

Why?

Strawberries, strawberries?

And they will come to the farm to get them.

It really feels good to have a product that somebody wants.

Do you want to know my favorite way to eat strawberries?

With chocolate no.

I literally like to stand over the kitchen sink and just got this ohh OK. You know, eating over the the sink or the stove, they say is very fattening.

But of course, that doesn't bother you.

But it does mate well to each their own.

These are so delicious.

Now we can't talk about Arkansas strawberries without mentioning their ideal pollinator.

Perhaps their number one pollinator, which you could say are community minded.

I'm Emily Beamis here with my husband Jeremy Bemis at Bemis Honey Bee Farm in southeast Little Rock.

Well got us into honey bees.

We bought the property and there's actually an airport on it and obviously we did not want to own an airport.

So this building actually used to be an airplane hanger.

We decided we're going to do Christmas trees and if you do Christmas trees you need to have a pumpkin patch so the number one reason why pumpkins don't grow is not enough pollinators.

The easiest thing to do is to get some bees and have some bees to pollinate the pumpkins.

Not on board with, so she's actually allergic to honey bees.

He decided we probably need to start selling some supplies.

We have the space to do it and then we quickly realize we need education as well.

So we started with some beginner classes.

Education is the most important thing with bees.

After you get your bees and you Start learning and reading some more, you realize how little you really know.

So better the educated beekeeper the the better the bees.

The bees aren't all antsy and everything.

We also have a wood shop where we build a lot of our own supplies so we.

Start to do as much as we came here and offer all things beekeeping to anybody looking to get started.

So, Jeremy, we're out in the workshop at the farm.

What are we gonna do today?

And today we're going to build boxes, so this is your standard langstroth box.

And this is the frame.

So this is what we're actually building.

Is the box that these frames will fit into OK?

Don't have much.

What good are bees doing for nature?

They're responsible for pollinating a large percentage of our food source fruits, and a lot of vegetables.

Things like that are pollinated by bees, so if we don't have them then we're really not going to have all that the honey bees not native to the US, so the native bees actually do a much better job of pollinating our crops than the honeybee does.

The what has happened is with our crop structure that we have.

We have miles and miles of different crops, soybeans, cotton, whatever.

It may be.

The honey bee is the only insect that will travel as far as it will to pollinate those crops.

So a native bee, if it goes 100 yards away from the the nest, that's a long ways away, whereas the honeybee could go up to three miles away from its hive.

So when you get a crop that needs to be pollinated, you can put a bunch of honey bees in there and they'll they'll just keep going and going and going, and we get food from them, so the honey bee is the only insect that we get food from.

And it is a frame, right?

Well, it's like 10 of these, so this actually holds 10 frames.

So this is this.

Is it as long as that fits in there, then you've done it right?

And the next time you pull this out, it's full of beautiful golden honey and honeycomb, right?

I meant the Bernice Garden farmers market in the South on Main district of Little Rock for the first of a series that we would like to call the farmers Market Roundup.

Farmers markets like this are a place where farmers and artisans can come together and sell their goods directly to the consumers.

I'm Amanda Ispell, I'm the events coordinator and manager of the Bernice Garden.

This beautiful Botanical Garden and sculpture garden surrounding our farmers market.

You can find local produce handcrafted goods.

You can find body products all from local artisans, local vendors, local growers and producers.

It's important to the farmers to have their community support.

And we also feel like it's great for the community to have the farmer support connecting people, connecting local produce the freshest products, and the best experience 15 varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

How long have you been coming here?

This is actually my first year, but it's been like a small family and I I really appreciate them here.

I love the farmers markets.

Being that I work for myself and I only have one employee, you know I don't get to interact.

You know the pandemic?

I like getting out and socializing a little bit.

I'm also really proud of what I'm doing, and it feels really good when people come and tell me what they've made and they really enjoy them.

I've been coming here for a couple years now.

We have a really vibrant farmers market scene this year.

I mean, we've got you know we got a lot of produce.

We have a lot of producers.

Farmers markets facilitate a personal bond and connection between the farmers, the shoppers and the Community.

The atmosphere at Bernice Garden just makes it that much more special.

Until next time I'm Lauren McCullough and this is good roots.

And that is our show for today.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm Christina Munoz.

We'll see you next week on Arkansas week good.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and KUARFM 89.