Oklahoma governor signs the nation’s strictest abortion ban

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Wednesday signed into regulation the nation’s strictest abortion ban, making the state the first within the nation to successfully finish availability of the process.

State lawmakers accepted the ban enforced by civil lawsuits relatively than criminal prosecution, similar to a Texas legislation that was handed last 12 months. The law takes effect immediately upon Stitt’s signature and prohibits all abortions with few exceptions. Abortion suppliers have said they may stop performing the procedure as quickly because the bill is signed.

“I promised Oklahomans that as governor I would signal every piece of pro-life laws that came across my desk and I'm proud to maintain that promise at this time,” the first-term Republican mentioned in an announcement. “From the second life begins at conception is when now we have a duty as human beings to do everything we will to protect that child’s life and the life of the mother. That's what I imagine and that is what nearly all of Oklahomans believe.”

Abortion providers across the nation have been bracing for the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s new conservative majority would possibly additional restrict the follow, and that has especially been the case in Oklahoma and Texas.

“The influence will likely be disastrous for Oklahomans,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the abortion-rights supporting Guttmacher Institute. “It would also have severe ripple effects, especially for Texas sufferers who had been traveling to Oklahoma in giant numbers after the Texas six-week abortion ban went into impact in September.”

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

The only exceptions in the Oklahoma legislation are to save lots of the life of a pregnant girl or if the pregnancy is the results of rape or incest that has been reported to regulation enforcement.

The bill particularly authorizes medical doctors to take away a “dead unborn baby brought on by 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, usually in a fallopian tube and early in being pregnant.

The legislation additionally does not apply to the usage of morning-after drugs similar to Plan B or any type of contraception.

Two of Oklahoma’s 4 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 anticipated to cease providing providers, it is unclear what is going to occur to ladies who qualify below one of the exceptions. The legislation’s creator, State Rep. Wendi Stearman, says doctors will likely be empowered to resolve which women qualify and that these abortions will be performed in hospitals. However providers and abortion-rights activists warn that attempting to prove qualification may show troublesome and even dangerous in some circumstances.

Along with the Texas-style bill already signed into legislation, the measure is one of at the least three anti-abortion payments sent this year to Stitt.

Oklahoma’s regulation is styled after a first-of-its-kind Texas regulation that the U.S. Supreme Court docket has allowed to stay in place that permits non-public residents to sue abortion suppliers or anybody who helps a lady 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 briefly blocked by the state’s Supreme Court

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