Fallin, who is rumored to be a potential vice presidential pick for Republican candidate Donald Trump and has previously signed pro-life bills, announced Friday she vetoed the bill because it would not withstand a constitutional challenge and is too vague in its wording.
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“No person shall perform or induce an abortion upon a pregnant woman”, the bill reads. Before Fallin’s veto, Liberty Counsel, a group that rose to national prominence a year ago defending the Kentucky clerk who refused to sign same-sex marriage licenses, had said Friday that it had helped support the legislation in Oklahoma.
The bill, which was passed by the state’s Senate Thursday, threatened a three-year prison sentence for doctors and the revocation of their medical licenses.
“This bill exposed the true motives behind restrictions across the country: to ban abortion”, Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement.
“The absence of any definition, analysis or medical standard renders this exception vague, indefinite and vulnerable to subjective interpretation and application”, she said.
According to the Center for Reproductive Freedom, which supports abortion rights, state lawmakers passed 47 new laws restricting abortion and proposed 400 more in 2015.
To override the veto, lawmakers require a two-thirds majority in each chamber.
A handful of Republicans joined with Democrats in voting against the bill, which now heads to Gov. Mary Fallin. That same year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a law that would have effectively banned all drug-induced abortions in the state. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal.
Mary Fallin walks on the floor of the Oklahoma House on Wednesday.
“Senate Bill 1552 would have made it a felony for physicians to perform abortions”. Under current Oklahoma law, anyone who’s not a doctor who performs an abortion is already guilty of a felony, so the vetoed legislation was putting licensed physicians in the cross hairs.
According to the sponsor of the bill, Republican Senator Nathan Dahm, inciting legal challenges was precisely what the bill was meant to do.
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“As one who proclaims to be pro-life, her actions run counter to her words”, Mat Staver, the group’s founder and chairman, said in a statement.
