Oklahoma’s Republican-dominated state legislature gave final approval to the nation’s most severe anti-abortion bill, which outlaws the procedure at any point past fertilisation.
The bill – which Governor Kevin Stitt has pledged to sign into law – has already drawn legal challenges from abortion providers and advocates. The measure is designed to take effect immediately once the governor signs it into law.
Once he does, Oklahoma will be the first state in the US to effectively make all abortions illegal, and abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion would be subject to civil suits from private individuals.
Governor Stitt, who has pledged to “outlaw” abortion in the state despite constitutional protections affirmed by the US Supreme Court in Roe v Wade, has already signed several anti-abortion measures into law this year, including a ban on the procedure past six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
He also signed a law that makes abortion care a felony punishable up to 10 years in prison, set to take effect in August.
“This ban must be stopped – along with the other abortion bans the state passed just last month,” according to a statement from Planned Parenthood Action.
Opponents warn that the bill could criminalise some forms of contraception as well as in vitro fertilisation.
If signed into law, patients across the state – including patients from Texas who have relied on abortion access in the neighbouring state after draconian measures were signed into law last year – would effectively be forced to carry pregnancies to term or travel long distances to states where care is accessible.
The measures joins a wave of anti-abortion bills filed by state legislators this year, emboldened by a forthcoming decision in a Mississippi case at the Supreme Court that is expected to overturn the landmark decision in Roe v Wade and its affirming ruling from 1992’s Planned Parenthood v Casey.
A decision in that case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is expected in June.
Oklahoma already has a so-called “trigger” ban in place, which would outlaw abortions entirely, designed to take effect without Roe protections.
This is a developing story
