Oklahoma Follows Texas’s Lead With New Abortion Penalties

Under the bill, anyone convicted of performing an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. It does not authorize criminal charges against a woman for receiving an abortion.

The Bans Off Oklahoma Rally at the Oklahoma state capitol April 5, 2022. Sarah Phipps/the Oklahoman via AP, file

OKLAHOMA CITY — The governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, signed a bill into law on Tuesday that makes it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states across the country to scale back abortion rights.

The bill, which takes effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns next month, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother. Abortion rights advocates say the bill signed by the GOP governor is certain to face a legal challenge.

Its passage comes as the conservative Supreme Court considers ratcheting back abortion rights that have been in place for nearly 50 years.

“We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma,” Governor Stitt said during a signing ceremony for the bill, flanked by anti-abortion lawmakers, clergy, and students. “I promised Oklahomans that I would sign every pro-life bill that hits my desk, and that’s what we’re doing here today.”

Under the bill, anyone convicted of performing an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. It does not authorize criminal charges against a woman for receiving an abortion.

Senator Nathan Dahm, a Republican from Broken Arrow, wrote the bill and is now running for Congress. Mr. Dahm called it the “strongest pro-life legislation in the country right now, which effectively eliminates abortion in Oklahoma.”

Abortion rights advocates say the bill is unconstitutional, and similar laws approved recently in Arkansas and Alabama have been blocked by federal courts.

“Oklahoma legislators are trying to ban abortion from all sides and merely seeing which of these dangerous, shameful bills they can get their governor to sign,” an obstetrician and gynecologist in both Oklahoma and Texas, Ghazaleh Moayediand, said in a statement. Dr. Moayediand is also a board member at Physicians for Reproductive Health, 

Although similar anti-abortion bills approved by the Oklahoma legislature in recent years have been stopped as unconstitutional, anti-abortion lawmakers have been buoyed by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow new Texas abortion restrictions to remain in place.

The new Texas law, the most restrictive anti-abortion law to take effect in America in decades, leaves enforcement up to private citizens, who are entitled to collect what critics call a “bounty” of $10,000 if they bring a successful lawsuit against a provider or anyone who helps a patient obtain an abortion.

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s failure to stop Texas from nullifying the constitutional right to abortion has emboldened other states to do the same,” the president and CEO of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northup, said in a statement. “We’ve sued the state of Oklahoma ten times in the last decade to protect abortion access and we will challenge this law as well to stop this travesty from ever taking effect.”

Several states, including Oklahoma, are pursuing legislation similar to the Texas law this year.

The Texas law bans abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy and makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. Abortions in Texas have plummeted by about 50 percent since the law took effect, while the number of Texans going to clinics out of state and requesting abortion pills online has gone up.

One of the Texas-style Oklahoma bills that is one vote away from the governor’s desk would ban abortions from the moment of conception and would take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature.


The New York Sun

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