(Washington) The Republican governor of Oklahoma, in the southern United States, announced on Tuesday that he signed a law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, one of the most restrictive in the country, while the Supreme Court would be preparing to reconsider this right at the federal level.
Posted yesterday at 6:27 p.m.
“I represent all four million Oklahoma residents who overwhelmingly want to protect unborn children,” Kevin Stitt wrote on Twitter as he signed into law the text passed by the state legislature last Thursday.
“I want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country,” he said, using the phrase used by anti-abortion Americans. The text provides for medical exceptions for access to abortion, but not in the event of rape or incest.
This conservative state had been welcoming thousands of Texan women seeking abortions for several months, after the passage of a similar text in this neighboring state.
Since September 2021, Texas has already put in place a law prohibiting any abortion from the moment when a heartbeat of the embryo is perceptible on ultrasound, i.e. approximately four weeks after fertilization.
The legality of similar texts in other states has been studied by the Supreme Court for several months.
But, Monday evening, the publication by the newspaper Politico of a draft decision of the Supreme Court on this subject indicates that the federal institution would be on the point of handing over to the States the power to authorize, or not, abortions, nearly 50 years after making them legal across the country.
The leak of this document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the Court, which recalled that it was not the final decision, had the effect of a bombshell in Washington and pushed Democratic President Joe Biden recalled its support for the right to abortion.
If the highest court were to overturn the “Roe v. Wade”, the country will return to the situation before 1973 when each state was free to prohibit or authorize abortion.
In all, 26 conservative states, mostly in the center and south of the country such as Wyoming, Tennessee or South Carolina, are ready to ban abortion altogether.