Oklahoma governor signs the nation’s strictest abortion ban

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Wednesday signed into law the nation’s strictest abortion ban, making the state the first within the nation to effectively end availability of the procedure.

State lawmakers authorised the ban enforced by civil lawsuits moderately than felony prosecution, much like a Texas law that was passed last yr. The regulation takes impact immediately upon Stitt’s signature and prohibits all abortions with few exceptions. Abortion providers have said they may stop performing the process as soon as the bill is signed.

“I promised Oklahomans that as governor I might signal every piece of pro-life laws that came across my desk and I'm proud to keep that promise right this moment,” the first-term Republican said in a statement. “From the second life begins at conception is when we now have a responsibility as human beings to do every little thing we can to guard that child’s life and the life of the mother. That is what I believe and that is what the vast majority of Oklahomans imagine.”

Abortion suppliers throughout the country have been bracing for the chance that the U.S. Supreme Court’s new conservative majority would possibly additional limit the follow, and that has particularly been the case in Oklahoma and Texas.

“The impact can be disastrous for Oklahomans,” stated Elizabeth Nash, a state coverage analyst for the abortion-rights supporting Guttmacher Institute. “It'll also have severe ripple results, particularly for Texas patients who had been traveling to Oklahoma in massive numbers after the Texas six-week abortion ban went into impact in September.”

The bills are part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states to cut back abortion rights. It comes on the heels of a leaked draft opinion from the nation’s excessive court docket that suggests justices are contemplating weakening or overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade choice that legalized abortion nearly 50 years in the past.

The one exceptions in the Oklahoma law are to save the lifetime of a pregnant girl or if the being pregnant is the result of rape or incest that has been reported to regulation enforcement.

The bill specifically authorizes medical doctors to take away a “useless unborn baby attributable to spontaneous abortion,” or miscarriage, or to take away an ectopic pregnancy, a doubtlessly life-threatening emergency that happens when a fertilized egg implants outdoors the uterus, typically in a fallopian tube and early in being pregnant.

The law additionally does not apply to the usage of morning-after pills corresponding to Plan B or any kind of contraception.

Two of Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics already stopped offering abortions after the governor signed a six-week ban earlier this month.

With the state’s two remaining abortion clinics expected to stop offering providers, it's unclear what will occur to ladies who qualify below one of the exceptions. The law’s writer, State Rep. Wendi Stearman, says medical doctors will be empowered to resolve which ladies qualify and that those abortions might be carried out in hospitals. However providers and abortion-rights activists warn that making an attempt to show qualification may show tough and even dangerous in some circumstances.

In addition to the Texas-style bill already signed into law, the measure is one in every of at the very least three anti-abortion bills sent this 12 months to Stitt.

Oklahoma’s regulation is styled after a first-of-its-kind Texas legislation that the U.S. Supreme Courtroom has allowed to remain in place that permits non-public citizens to sue abortion suppliers or anybody who helps a woman acquire an abortion. Different Republican-led states sought to copy Texas’ ban. Idaho’s governor signed the first copycat measure in March, though it has been temporarily blocked by the state’s Supreme Courtroom

The third Oklahoma invoice is to take effect this summer and would make it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by as much as 10 years in prison. That bill comprises no exceptions for rape or incest.