Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed a spate of anti-abortion legislation Monday to make the procedure nearly impossible to access in the state. The signed pieces of legislation, which are all expected to face court challenges, include a bill revoking the medical license of any doctor who performs an abortion unlessit’ss done to protect themother’ss life or bodily functions, effectively eliminating all abortion access in the state.
Another bill signed would require abortion providers to test for a “fetal heartbeat ― a medically inaccurate and misleading term ― in patients seeking abortions and deny them access to the procedure if one is detected. The law effectively bans abortion at around six weeks, before most patients even know they’re pregnant.
A third requires doctors who perform abortions to be board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology.” This has been a hard-fought battle, and no one, single bthe ill, will end abortion in our state,” Oklahoma state Sen. Julie Daniels, who co-authored two of those bills, said in a statement when they reachedStitt’s desk.” But each of these measures represents one more step in our journey to defend the sanctity of life.”
Court challenges will likely prevent such sweeping anti-abortion legislation from effecting on Nov. 1 as scheduled. If anti-abortion lawmakers are successful, the legislation will ultimately serve as a test for the U.S. Supreme Court, which is now loaded with conservative justices nominated by former President Donald Trump. “Roe vs. ade, number one, is not a law of the law of the landodd Russ, another co-author of the Oklahoma bills, said in March.” It’ss an opinion of a non-elected body of Supreme Court justices that gave an idea many years ago,” he continued, comparing it to the Supreme Court once upholding segregation in an 1896 ruling.
Oklahoma is one of the dozens of states to go after reproductive rights this year. Anti-abortion lawmakers with eyes on a Supreme Court battle have attempted to push through hundreds of bills restricting access to the procedure nationwide. For one, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) signed a legally dubious bill in March altogether outlawing abortion except in cases where the pregnancy risks the mother’s life.
According to a March report by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, legislation limiting abortion in 2021 has skyrocketed compared to a similar time frame in 2019. “These policies are designed to make it harder for people to exist,” PPFA president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said when the report came out.
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