Oklahoma governor signs the nation’s strictest abortion ban

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

State lawmakers authorized the ban enforced by civil lawsuits quite than felony prosecution, similar to a Texas regulation that was passed last year. The legislation takes effect immediately upon Stitt’s signature and prohibits all abortions with few exceptions. Abortion providers have stated they are going to cease performing the process as soon as the bill is signed.

“I promised Oklahomans that as governor I might sign every bit of pro-life laws that came throughout my desk and I am proud to maintain that promise right this moment,” the first-term Republican said in a press release. “From the moment life begins at conception is when we have a responsibility as human beings to do the whole lot we can to guard that child’s life and the lifetime of the mother. That's what I consider and that's what the vast majority of Oklahomans consider.”

Abortion providers throughout the country have been bracing for the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s new conservative majority might additional limit the apply, and that has particularly been the case in Oklahoma and Texas.

“The impression can be disastrous for Oklahomans,” stated Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the abortion-rights supporting Guttmacher Institute. “It will also have extreme ripple results, particularly for Texas patients who had been touring to Oklahoma in giant numbers after the Texas six-week abortion ban went into effect in September.”

The bills are a 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 high court docket that suggests justices are considering weakening or overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nearly 50 years ago.

The only exceptions within the Oklahoma legislation are to save lots of the lifetime of a pregnant woman or if the being pregnant is the result of rape or incest that has been reported to regulation enforcement.

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

The legislation additionally doesn't apply to the usage of morning-after drugs similar to Plan B or any type 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 anticipated to cease providing companies, it is unclear what's going to occur to girls who qualify beneath one of the exceptions. The legislation’s writer, State Rep. Wendi Stearman, says docs can be empowered to resolve which girls qualify and that those abortions might be carried out in hospitals. But providers and abortion-rights activists warn that attempting to prove qualification could prove tough and even harmful in some circumstances.

Along with the Texas-style bill already signed into regulation, the measure is one in all at the very least three anti-abortion payments despatched this year to Stitt.

Oklahoma’s law is styled after a first-of-its-kind Texas law that the U.S. Supreme Court docket has allowed to remain in place that enables personal residents to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion. Other Republican-led states sought to repeat Texas’ ban. Idaho’s governor signed the first copycat measure in March, though it has been quickly blocked by the state’s Supreme Court docket

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