Oklahoma abortion doctors and clinics are attempting to determine their next moves after the state legislature enacted a ban on nearly all abortions beginning at the time of fertilisation.
The bill, which would be the nation’s harshest abortion prohibition, is currently on Governor Kevin Stitt’s desk. The Oklahoma bill, like the six-week abortion bill passed in Texas last year, allows ordinary persons to sue anyone who provides or assists in the procurement of an illegal abortion. Mr. Stitt is anticipated to sign the legislation.
The ramifications will be terrible for Oklahoma’s few abortion facilities, not to mention the thousands of Oklahomans and out-of-state patients who seek that care.
Tulsa Women’s Clinic escort Susan Braselton told PBS News that the clinic had to cancel all but five of its 22 appointments the day after Oklahoma enacted a separate six-week abortion restriction few weeks earlier. Under the new law, the clinic would have been unable to treat the five patients it did see.
“These laws don’t stop abortion,” Andrea Gallegos, the clinic’s executive administrator, told the New York Times. “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.”
Gallegos indicated last week that if Roe v Wade is repealed, the clinic may have to close entirely. The same thing would happen if Oklahoma passed this bill.
Tulsa Women’s Clinic is one of only two clinics in town that provide abortions. The other clinic in Tulsa is run by Planned Parenthood, as is the one in Oklahoma City, where the provider Trust Women also has an office. Abortion providers in Oklahoma have experienced an increase in demand from patients unable to obtain care in Texas, but many of those patients will now have to travel substantially further to obtain abortion.
It’s a grim scenario for both abortion providers and patients. Some have speculated that Indigenous tribes in Oklahoma could be able to provide abortion services on tribal grounds, but Mr Stitt, who, like other Republican officials in the state, opposes abortion even in cases of rape, appeared to threaten tribes considering such a move over the weekend.
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