Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: Legacy of the new Republican majority

  The prodigious 2011 Regular Legislative Session not only saw sweeping conservative fiscal changes to state government, the new Republican led legislative bodies also set out on an unmistakably conservative social mission.

  This legislature approved an illegal immigration law that mirrors the Arizona measure. In addition, this very conservative pro-life legislature enacted a new strict anti abortion bill. The new law is patterned after a law Nebraska enacted in 2010. In fact, legislatures in more than 30 states are passing or moving forward with bills to restrict abortion rights that could prompt the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the issue.