No Roe
Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2022 11:32 am
The Oklahoma state legislature has been busy.
This week, in a surprise move, the state house passed a bill criminalizing all abortions. The bill had been passed by the state senate last year but had been largely abandoned as Oklahoma conservatives sought other, more promising, ways to restrict abortion in the state. As an outright ban on abortions, enforced by the state, the Oklahoma bill that now heads to the governor’s desk for signature would be in plain violation of Roe v Wade, and unlikely to survive a court challenge while that precedent stands.
The passage of the bill – which makes abortion a felony and would imprison doctors for up to 10 years per procedure – indicates that the state, like most legal observers, expects the supreme court to overturn Roe soon. The bill, which Oklahoma Republicans voted on while many of their Democratic colleagues were away participating in an abortion and civil rights rally, provides no exceptions for rape or incest. Oklahoma’s governor, Republican Kevin Stitt, has previously stated that he will sign any anti-choice bill that is sent to him. If he signs this one, it will go into effect this summer.
The day after the Oklahoma legislature sent the outright ban to Stitt’s desk, Oklahoma’s House Committee on Public Health approved another bill, this one banning abortion at six weeks. That bill is modeled after Texas’ SB8, the abortion ban that the supreme court allowed to go into effect in September, which bypasses Roe by having the ban on abortions be enforced by private lawsuits instead of state prosecution. Instead of imprisoning doctors, as the outright ban would do, this law aims to bankrupt them. The Texas-style bill, SB1503, now heads to the full Oklahoma house for approval. If it becomes law, it will take effect immediately.
The moves by Oklahoma come as the state has been playing host to reproductive refugees fleeing neighboring Texas for the past seven months. Ever since the supreme court allowed SB8 to go into effect on 1 September, Texas women in need have been flocking to Oklahoma’s four clinics, enduring the labyrinthine restrictions that Oklahoma already has in place – including an ultrasound, a 72-hour waiting period, and mandatory anti-abortion counseling – at great expense, in order to end their pregnancies. Texans fleeing the state for care have wound up in clinics from California to New York, but more of them have gone to Oklahoma than to any other state. More than half of Texas women who have fled the state for abortions since SB8 went into effect have gotten their care in Oklahoma. The state’s clinics – two in Tulsa, and two in Oklahoma City – have been slammed with these out-of-state visitors.
“What we saw very immediately after SB8 is, we doubled our volume,” Kailey Voellinger, the director of a clinic in Oklahoma City, told NBC News. “We went from seeing about 100 to 150 patients to almost 300 in a month.” She says the demand is so great that her clinic has had to turn women away. Now, these new laws might stop her from treating anyone at all.
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