Oklahoma governor signs near-total abortion ban into law
The three bills — all slated to go into effect on November 1 — may soon face legal challenges in light of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide prior to viability, which can occur at around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Of the 12 so-called gestational bans — which bar abortions past a certain point in pregnancy — passed since the start of 2019, none have gone into effect after most of them have been blocked by judges.
Gloria Pedro, Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes regional manager of public policy and organizing for Arkansas and Oklahoma, said of a heartbeat bill potentially blocking abortions before people know they’re pregnant: “Aside from being unconstitutional, it’s incredibly unfair and patronizing to women.”
“We’ve seen bans like this fail time and time again, so it’s a real waste of taxpayers’ money and it just shows that the Legislature has their priorities wrong in the middle of a pandemic,” Pedro told CNN before the bills were signed. “When they should be working on expanding health care for Oklahomans, they are trying to deny health care and it’s just cruel and unnecessary.”
Oklahoma state Sen. Julie Daniels, who co-sponsored the near-total ban and the heartbeat ban, told CNN before the bills were signed that she was undeterred by similar prior laws being blocked by the courts.
“You do not stop working to protect life just because you have, you know, a high hill to climb to get the bill to go into effect, and this is a very real way of saving life,” she continued. “And so we continue to chip away at it in hopes that one day, there will be a different decision at the US Supreme Court level and that this issue, which rightly and properly belongs with the states and not the federal government, will once again be returned to the states.”
Asked about the lack of exceptions for rape or incest, Daniels said that in such scenarios, “you have the woman who was raped, and I believe incest is the same as rape, and you have the baby. So why have two victims? Why not have one victim? The child and the woman were both innocent, but why end up with two innocent victims by killing the child?”