BILL BANS ABORTION AT FERTILIZATION
Okla. Legislature passes legislation, sends it to governor
The Oklahoma Legislature on Thursday gave final approval to a bill that prohibits nearly all abortions starting at fertilization, which would make it the nation’s strictest abortion law.
The bill subjects abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion to civil suits from private individuals. It would take effect immediately if signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who has pledged to make his state the most anti-abortion in the nation.
“There can be nothing higher or more critical than the defense of innocent, unborn life,” state Rep. Jim Olsen, a Republican, said Thursday on the floor of the Oklahoma House, where the bill passed on a 73-16 vote.
The measure is modeled on a law that took effect in Texas in September, which has relied on civilian instead of criminal enforcement to work around court challenges. Because of that provision — the law explicitly says state authorities cannot bring charges — the U.S. Supreme Court and state courts have said they cannot block the ban from taking effect, even if it goes against the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.
The Oklahoma ban goes further than the Texas law, which bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Thursday’s vote was the latest step by Oklahoma’s
Republican-led Legislature, working alongside Stitt, to pass bans in an attempt to outlaw abortion entirely. Together, they have put their state at the head of the pack of Republican-led states rushing to pass laws that restrict or prohibit abortion in anticipation that the Supreme Court is soon likely to overturn Roe. A leaked draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito — along with oral arguments in the case at hand, regarding a Mississippi law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy — indicated that
the court was prepared to do so.
In Oklahoma, outnumbered Democrats in the state House pleaded with their colleagues not to pass the bill Thursday. Several urged instead for Oklahoma to focus more on funding for family planning services or on improving the lives of young Oklahomans living in poverty.
“Legislation like this, on the surface, says that we are going to end abortion in our state,” said state Rep. Trish Ranson, a Democrat who voted against the bill. “The
manner in which it chooses to do so is punitive, it’s speculative and it draws the worst of us together.”
The bill makes exceptions for cases of rape and incest, but only if those crimes have been reported to law enforcement.
If signed by the governor, the Oklahoma bill would cut off another option for Texas women who had been traveling across the state border to seek legal procedures, and it seeks to punish even those from out of state who assist Oklahoma women in getting abortions.
Oklahoma already has a trigger ban that would immediately ban abortion if the court overturns Roe, as well as a ban on abortion that has remained on the books since before the Roe decision in 1973. Two weeks ago, just after the leak of the memo, Stitt signed a six-week ban closely modeled on the Texas legislation. The previous month, he had signed a law that will take effect in late August, outlawing abortion entirely except to save the life of the mother. That ban imposes criminal penalties on abortion providers.
The new six-week abortion ban had already sharply reduced the number of procedures Oklahoma abortion providers could perform. Andrea Gallegos, executive administrator at the Tulsa Women’s Clinic, said the governor’s signature on the bill passed Thursday would make performing any abortions in the state impossible.
“These laws don’t stop abortion,” Gallegos said. “Women will still seek and get abortions. We’re just forcing the citizens of this country to have to flee their own state to access health care. It’s pretty awful.”
The Oklahoma legislation attempts to combine two legal approaches: banning abortion entirely and using civilian enforcement.
The Oklahoma bill would allow civilian lawsuits against anyone who helps pay for an abortion, which could implicate people across the country who have been donating to charitable organizations that help women in restrictive states get abortions elsewhere.
Those who sue successfully would be given awards of at least $10,000, and compensatory damages including for “emotional distress.”
The bill exempts women who get abortions from lawsuits, which has been a red line that legislatures have been unwilling to cross. It does not apply to abortions necessary to “save the life of the unborn child” or the life of the mother “in a medical emergency.”
The bill defines an unborn child as “a human fetus or embryo in any stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.”