Oklahoma City (AP) – Oklahoma lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill banning all abortions with few exceptions, and providers said they would stop the procedure as soon as the governor signs it in the latest example of Republican national pressure to restrict access to what has been a constitutional right for nearly half a century.
Oklahoma lawmakers have already passed half a dozen anti-abortion measures this year, and as abortion providers across the country prepare for the new US Supreme Court’s conservative majority to further limit the practice, especially in Oklahoma and Texas.
Two of Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics have already stopped providing abortions after the governor signed a six-week ban earlier this month, and a lawyer for the other two independent clinics said Thursday they would no longer offer services once the bill is signed. The bill is likely to reach Gov. Kevin Steet’s office early next week, and the Republican re-election candidate has already said he will sign any abortion bill sent to him by the legislature. It will enter into force as soon as it is signed.
“This bill could come into force at any time, and once it does, anyone can sue the clinic, the doctors, anyone else involved in an abortion in Oklahoma,” said Rabia Mukadam, a lawyer with the Reproductive Center. Rights, which represents clinics in Oklahoma in legal challenges against several proposed new anti-abortion laws.
The bills are part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states across the country to reduce abortion rights. It comes after a draft opinion from the nation’s Supreme Court expired, suggesting judges are considering weakening or reversing Rowe’s remarkable ruling against Wade, which legalized abortion nearly 50 years ago.
Collinsville Republican Wendy Sturman’s bill will ban all abortions except to save the life of a pregnant woman or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest reported to law enforcement.
“Is it our goal to protect the right to life or not?” Steerman asked his colleagues before the bill was passed by 73 to 16 votes, mostly by party.
The bill specifically authorizes doctors to remove a “stillborn child caused by a miscarriage or miscarriage,” or to eliminate an ectopic pregnancy, a potentially life-threatening emergency that occurs when a fertilized egg is implanted outside the uterus, often in the fallopian tube and early pregnancy.
As all US abortion clinics are expected to stop offering services, it is unclear where a woman who meets one of these exceptions would go for an abortion, because providers say many doctors would be afraid to break the law.
The bill also does not apply to the use of Plan B, other morning-after pills or any type of contraception.
As the bill defines an “unborn child” as a human fetus or embryo at every stage of pregnancy from fertilization to birth, it is not expected to apply to in vitro fertilization, which is when eggs are fertilized in a laboratory before being transferred to the uterus of the woman, said Dr. Eli Resheff, a fertility specialist in Oklahoma City.
“The bill does not criminalize what we do,” Reshef said. “Regardless of one’s position on abortion, we are not concerned about the bill, which is detrimental to our particular profession.
The bill is one of at least three anti-abortion bills sent to Stit this year. Another abortion bill, similar to last year’s Texas bill, bans the procedure after heart activity can be detected in the embryo, which experts say is about six weeks old, has already taken effect and has already drastically curtailed practice in Oklahoma. . Another bill, due to take effect this summer, would make abortion punishable by up to 10 years in prison. This bill does not contain exceptions for rape or incest.
“We are currently preparing for the most restrictive environment that politicians can create: a total ban on abortion without exception,” said Emily Wells, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which has stopped providing abortions in two its Oklahoma Clinics after the six-week ban went into effect earlier this month. “This is the worst abortion care scenario in Oklahoma.”
Like the Texas law, the Oklahoma bill will allow private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps a woman have an abortion. After the US Supreme Court allowed the mechanism to remain in place, other Republican-led states tried to copy Texas’ ban. The governor of Idaho signed the first copy measure in March, although it was temporarily blocked by the state’s Supreme Court.
Since Texas passed its bill last year, there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of abortions performed in the state, with many women going to Oklahoma and other surrounding states for the procedure.
In Oklahoma, there are pending legal challenges to both the abortion criminalization bill and the six-week ban in Texas, both of which can still be lifted, but courts have so far failed to do so.
The number of abortions performed each year in Oklahoma has steadily declined over the past two decades, from more than 6,200 in 2002 to 3,737 in 2020, at least for more than 20 years, according to the Oklahoma Department of Health. . In 2020, before the Texas law was passed, about 9% of abortions performed in Oklahoma were Texas women.
In the first four months after the Texas law went into effect last September, abortions at state clinics fell by an average of 46 percent from the same period last year. But the study also found a sharp increase in the number of women in Texas who ordered abortion pills by mail and traveled outside the state for abortion.
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