The Oklahoma Legislature on Thursday gave final approval to a bill banning nearly all abortions beginning with fertilization, making it the toughest abortion law in the country.
Posted at 6:03 p.m.
Updated at 7:08 p.m.
The law is modeled after one that went into effect in Texas in September, which relies on civil — rather than criminal — enforcement to circumvent legal challenges. But it goes further than Texas law, which prohibits abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
This bill subjects abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion to civil suits from individuals. It would take effect as soon as it is signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who has pledged to make his state the most abortion-friendly in the nation.
The Republican-led Legislature backed it up by passing ban after ban, in an effort to make abortion completely illegal. Together, they put Oklahoma ahead of the pack of Republican states rushing to pass laws restricting or prohibiting abortion in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s upcoming reversal of the ruling. Roe v. wadewhich established a constitutional right to abortion.
A leaked memo written by Judge Samuel Alito — along with the oral arguments in the case in question, a Mississippi law that prohibits the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy — says the court was ready to do so.
If signed by the governor, Oklahoma’s bill would deprive Texas women of another option, that of crossing the state line to obtain legal procedures. It aims to punish even out-of-state people who help Oklahoma women get abortions.
Oklahoma already has a provision that would immediately ban abortion if the court overturns the ruling. Roe. The state also has an abortion ban dating back to well before the ruling. Roe in 1973. Two weeks ago, right after the leak, Kevin Stitt signed a six-week ban closely modeled on Texas law. The previous month, he had signed a law that will come into force at the end of August, completely banning abortion except to save the life of the mother.
Civil approach
The bill adopted Thursday attempts to combine two approaches: the total ban on abortion and the use of civil enforcement. Both the United States Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court have refused to block the Texas law because it relies on civil enforcement rather than the state.
Oklahoma’s bill would allow civil suits to be brought against anyone who performs or induces an abortion, as well as anyone who knowingly “aids or encourages” a woman to have an abortion. This includes those who help fund them, which could involve people across the country who have donated to charities that help women in restrictive states get abortions elsewhere.
Those who win their case would be awarded compensation of at least $10,000, as well as compensatory damages, including for “emotional distress”.
The bill exempts women who have abortions from legal action, a red line lawmakers were 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 the event of a medical emergency”. It also allows abortion if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, as long as that crime has been reported to law enforcement.
PHOTO AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated last Saturday in the United States to defend the right to abortion, threatened by the Supreme Court, which seems ready to go back 50 years after its historic decision to protect it.
It defines an unborn child as “a human fetus or embryo at any stage of gestation, from fertilization to birth”. Anti-abortion groups, which view abortion as murder, have tried in vain since the decision Roe, to pass federal or state legislation defining life as beginning at fertilization. Proponents of abortion rights have argued that this would effectively ban birth control methods that prevent implantation, such as the intrauterine device, but Oklahoma’s bill clarifies that it does not apply to contraception.
Asked at Fox News Sunday on how he would help women who carried through with their pregnancies despite financial or other hardships that would make it difficult to raise a child, Kevin Stitt blamed the ‘socialist democratic left’ for trying to abort the children poor.
“We believe that God has a specific plan for every life and every child, and we want everyone to have the same opportunities in Oklahoma, and aborting a child is not the right answer,” he said.