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 effectively end availability of the process.

State lawmakers approved the ban enforced by civil lawsuits relatively than criminal prosecution, much like a Texas regulation that was handed final 12 months. The law takes impact instantly upon Stitt’s signature and prohibits all abortions with few exceptions. Abortion providers have said they are going to cease performing the procedure as quickly because the bill is signed.

“I promised Oklahomans that as governor I might sign each piece of pro-life legislation that got here across my desk and I am proud to keep that promise at present,” the first-term Republican stated in a press release. “From the second life begins at conception is when we've a responsibility as human beings to do all the things we can to protect that baby’s life and the lifetime of the mother. That's what I imagine and that is what the vast majority of Oklahomans consider.”

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

“The impact will likely be disastrous for Oklahomans,” mentioned Elizabeth Nash, a state coverage analyst for the abortion-rights supporting Guttmacher Institute. “It'll also have severe ripple effects, particularly for Texas sufferers who had been touring to Oklahoma in large 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 cut back abortion rights. It comes on the heels of a leaked draft opinion from the nation’s excessive court that means 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 lady or if the pregnancy is the results of rape or incest that has been reported to regulation enforcement.

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

The legislation additionally does not apply to the use of morning-after drugs comparable 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 expected to stop providing providers, it is unclear what is going to occur to girls who qualify below one of the exceptions. The regulation’s author, State Rep. Wendi Stearman, says doctors might be empowered to determine which girls qualify and that those abortions can be carried out in hospitals. But suppliers and abortion-rights activists warn that making an attempt to prove qualification could show difficult and even harmful in some circumstances.

In addition to the Texas-style invoice already signed into law, the measure is one among at the very least three anti-abortion bills sent this yr 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 allows personal residents to sue abortion providers or anybody who helps a girl receive 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 time and would make it a felony to carry out an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. That invoice comprises no exceptions for rape or incest.