The latest battleground in the Republican fight to ban abortion is in Oklahoma, where the state legislature has passed a Bill making it a felony for doctors to perform the procedure.
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Sources familiar with the governor’s thinking told CNN that the decision to veto the bill “weighed heavily” on the anti-abortion rights governor, but that the “hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees” faced by the state from a near-certain Constitutional challenge to the bill eventually led to her veto.
Dahm said that the controversial anti-abortion legislation was created to be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that ultimately legalized abortion nationwide.
Legal experts have said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that abortion is legal in the United States and Oklahoma must abide by the court’s decision.
No person shall perform or induce an abortion upon a pregnant woman unless that person is a physician licensed to practice medicine in the State of Oklahoma.
The latest bill would have made it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion.
The Oklahoma bill is the first such measure of its kind, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which says that other states seeking to outlaw abortion have simply tried to ban the procedure rather than attach penalties like this. In order to be successful, the bill would have to pass both chambers with a two-thirds majority. Governor Fallin clearly agreed with their assessment of the controversial Oklahoma abortion bill, and she did what she could do to save them the trouble bringing the matter before the courts.
“Senate Bill 1552 would have made it a felony for physicians to perform abortions”. Even before the bill ended up on her desk, Fallin’s spokesman said almost 2,900 people had contacted her office by early May to express their thoughts on the legislation.
Before Fallin’s veto, Liberty Counsel, a group that rose to national prominence previous year defending the Kentucky clerk who refused to sign same-sex marriage licenses, had said Friday that it had helped support the legislation in Oklahoma. “This is a despicable betrayal of her word and of innocent children whose lives will be cut short because of her cowardly act”.
“The doctors think it’s a little too radical”, he said. Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said the bill would have put “doctors in the cross hairs for providing women with the option of exercising our fundamental right to decide how and when to start a family”.
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The Center for Reproductive Rights contacted the notoriously pro-life Fallin after the anti-abortion bill inexplicably passed without discussion.
