Oklahoma is the latest state to forward aggressively restrictive abortion legislation. The Republican state legislature has found a new and exciting way to criminalize abortions in their state: punish the doctors.
The Oklahoma House of Representatives voted on Thursday to pass a bill that would make it a felony to perform abortions. Doctors would be subject to losing their licenses if they perform abortions for any reason beyond a measure to protect the mother’s life and remove a miscarriage, with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. This would essentially make all abortion illegal in the state.
The bill will next pass to the state senate (overwhelmingly Republican and likely to pass the measure) and onto the desk of Governor Mary Fallin, who hasn’t given any indication of her stance toward it. Oklahoma is already a wildly inhospitable state for reproductive rights, with only two abortion clinics and having passed a slew of incremental anti-choice measures in the past few years.
