Oklahoma lawmakers pass bill banning most abortions after ‘fertilization’

Oklahoma lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill that would ban abortions from the moment of “fertilization,” effectively prohibiting almost all abortions in the state.

If signed into law by Gov. Kevin Stitt, R, it would be the strictest prohibition in the country and further change the national landscape for abortion, as millions of patients face the prospect of traveling hundreds of miles to undergo the procedure in the face of multiple states imposing severe limits. Oklahoma had been a refuge for some women from neighboring Texas, where a six-week ban went into effect last year.

Stitt has said he wanted Oklahoma to be “the most pro-life state in the country,” and Republicans there have sought to make the state the vanguard in banning abortion. Two weeks ago, Stitt signed into law a prohibition on abortions in the state for pregnancies past six weeks, and now he will have an opportunity to impose more far-reaching restrictions.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision next month on the fate of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision guaranteeing a nationwide right to abortion. In anticipation of the court overturning Roe, Republicans in dozens of states have rushed to write laws that would severely restrict abortion access or ban the procedure.

The Oklahoma bill is similar in its enforcement mechanism to the one that was signed into law in Texas last year, allowing civilians to file lawsuits against those who perform or help facilitate an abortion.

Under the bill, those who could be sued include anyone who “performs or induces” an abortion; anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion,” including paying for one; and anyone who even “intends to engage” in either of the two actions above.

The bill states a lawsuit cannot be brought against a woman who had or seeks to have an abortion.

The ban could take effect once the governor signs the measure because the bill is modeled after the restrictive Texas law that has evaded court intervention with a novel legal strategy that empowers private citizens to enforce the law. The Supreme Court and other courts have said they cannot block those bans even though they are at odds with Roe.

The bill defines “fertilization” as the moment a sperm meets the egg. It explicitly allows for the use of the Plan B pill, a widely used form of emergency contraception, but would prohibit medical abortions using pills. The bill exempts from its definition of abortion any procedure to “save the life or preserve the health of the unborn child,” to “remove a dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion” or to remove an ectopic pregnancy, in which the fetus grows outside the uterus.

The bill makes exceptions for abortion if it is “necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency” or if the pregnancy is the result of rape, sexual assault or incest that has been reported to law enforcement.

The bill passed the Oklahoma House on a 73-to-16 vote Thursday after impassioned debate.

“There is no higher principle than the protection of innocent life,” Oklahoma state Rep. Jim Olsen, R, said during floor debate. “Innocent, unborn life. There can be no higher cause that we as a body can address.”

Rep. Monroe Nichols, D, responded that “there is another innocent life that we should also be thinking about” - the life of the pregnant person who is facing the decision of whether to have an abortion.

“I think we can’t lose that because of our aversion to something that we believe to be evil,” Nichols said, adding that the legislation would essentially put people who have abortions “on trial.”

Rep. Wendi Stearman, R, the bill’s sponsor, hailed passage of the measure, which heads to Stitt and would go into effect immediately if he signs it into law.

“It is my sincere hope that, in addition to the criminal bill passed this session, this civil liability bill will provide strong, additional protection of the life of unborn children in Oklahoma,” Stearman said in a news release.

The vote came around the time Vice President Kamala Harris was holding a virtual meeting Thursday afternoon with abortion providers about reproductive rights. Harris condemned the Oklahoma ban, calling it “one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country - a ban that would outlaw abortion from the moment of fertilization.”

“Now, think about that for a second: from the moment of fertilization,” Harris said. “It’s outrageous, and it’s just the latest in a series of extreme laws around the country.”

On Thursday, Planned Parenthood vowed to take Oklahoma to court over the legislation, saying the ban “must be stopped.”

“The Oklahoma legislature just passed a total ban on abortion, enforced by private citizens,” the pro-abortion rights group tweeted. “This ban will take effect as soon as the governor signs the bill, making Oklahoma the first state to outlaw abortion entirely - even while Roe v. Wade still stands.”

Democratic Oklahoma state representatives had sounded alarms over the bill. Among some of the concerns they raised were that it could affect in vitro fertilization.

“Looking at the language, it’s hard to see how it wouldn’t affect in vitro fertilization because it talks about as soon as the ovum and the sperm meet, and the egg is fertilized, that means that’s a person,” Rep. Emily Virgin, D, said, according to KOKH News. “That’s what happens with in vitro fertilization, you create embryos.”

Stearman said IVF was not included in the bill, as it “would be tough” to prove that an abortion had occurred in that situation.

Trust Women, an Oklahoma abortion provider, called the bill’s passage “a gratuitous and cruel flaunting of power by anti-abortion legislators” and noted the legislature had already passed multiple bans this session.

“The litany of oppressive and punitive anti-abortion laws that have come into being this year signal to the people of Oklahoma that their agency does not matter, their dreams do not matter and that their lives do not matter,” Trust Women spokesman Zack Gingrich-Gaylord said in a statement.

When Stitt signed the ban on abortions past six weeks, he did so the day after the stunning leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe. At the time, he spoke about his effort to make Oklahoma the most “pro-life state.”

On Sunday, Stitt defended signing the bill, which unlike the measure passed Thursday does not include exceptions for reported cases of rape and incest, telling Fox News: “That is a human being inside the womb. . . . We’re going to do everything we can to protect life and love both the mother and the child. And we don’t think that killing one to protect another is the right thing to do either.”

Even in the weeks that have passed since Stitt signed the six-week ban into law, Gingrich-Gaylord said it had had a “dramatic” effect.

“Our patients are frightened, confused about the new reality they now live in,” he said. “They are angry at a government that continues to demonstrate a reckless and enthusiastic disregard for their lives.”