No state currently prohibits abortion starting at fertilization. The Oklahoma legislation attempts to do so by employing a legal tactic the courts have allowed: civilian enforcement.
If signed by the governor, the Oklahoma bill would cut off another option for Texas women who had been flooding across the state border to seek legal procedures, and it seeks to punish even those from out of state who assist Oklahoma women in getting abortions.
In 2017, the last year for which statistics were available, there were 4,780 abortions in Oklahoma, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. As in most states, Oklahoma’s abortion rate had been declining. But the Texas law resulted in an influx of women crossing into Oklahoma to get abortions. Planned Parenthood said its health centers in Oklahoma saw a 2,500 percent increase in the number of patients from Texas in the first three months the law was in effect.
The State of Roe v. Wade
What is Roe v. Wade? Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme court decision that legalized abortion across the United States. The 7-2 ruling was announced on Jan. 22, 1973. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, a modest Midwestern Republican and a defender of the right to abortion, wrote the majority opinion.
Oklahoma already has a trigger ban that would immediately ban abortion if the court overturns Roe, as well as a ban on abortion that has remained on the books since before the Roe decision. Two weeks ago, just after the leak of the Alito draft opinion, Mr. Stitt signed a six-week ban closely modeled on the Texas legislation. The previous month, he had signed a law that will take effect in late August, outlawing abortion entirely except to save the life of the mother. That ban imposes criminal penalties on abortion providers.
The new six-week abortion ban had already sharply reduced the number of procedures Oklahoma abortion providers could perform. Andrea Gallegos, the executive administrator at the Tulsa Women’s Clinic, said the governor’s signature on the bill passed Thursday would make performing any abortions in the state impossible.
“These laws don’t stop abortion,” Ms. Gallegos said. “Women will still seek and get abortions. We’re just forcing the citizens of this country to have to flee their own state to access health care. It’s pretty awful.”
The effects could reverberate nationally, abortion rights supporters said.
“This signals to other states that they, too, can ban abortion,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute. “And for our clinic network, this disrupts access across the country.”