Just a day after lawmakers in Oklahoma passed a bill that would make performing an abortion in the state a felony, Governor Mary Fallin did not wait long to cast her veto on the measure on Friday.
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“This obviously unconstitutional bill will never withstand legal scrutiny”, president of the reproductive rights advocacy group Naral Pro-Choice America Ilyse Hogue said in a statement.
Fallin vetoed Senate Bill 11 42 which would have authorized hog hunting at night with spotlights and without permission from state game wardens.
Oklahoma lawmakers can attempt to override Fallin’s veto, but it wasn’t immediately known whether they would try.
Oklahoma has created a bill that would make getting an abortion a felony.
As Mother Jones reported in April, the bill would make performing abortions, except for those meant to save a woman’s life, a felony punishable by a minimum of one year in prison. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, had said he relished the chance to fight for it in court and hoped that it could lead to a reconsideration of abortion rights by the Supreme Court. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article. Hog hunting at night with spotlights is currently allowed now at the discretion of state game wardens, who can issue permits to landowners with feral pig problems.
Trump in the past has said women who get abortions if the practice should face “some form of punishment”, though he later walked it back and said it was the doctor – not the woman – who should be punished if the procedure were to be outlawed.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has only until Wednesday, May 25 to approve or veto the bill.
The Center for Reproductive Rights contacted the notoriously pro-life Fallin after the anti-abortion bill inexplicably passed without discussion.
Fallin is a Republican that has signed 18 anti-abortion measures. In other words: A state measure can’t end abortion.
Opponents of Senate Bill 1552, which also threatened to revoke the licenses of doctors, said it amounted to an outright ban on abortion. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, signed it Thursday. That same year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a law that would have effectively banned all drug-induced abortions in the state.
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The funding cuts or extended waiting times shrink access to abortion, McNicholas said, as does the 2013 Texas law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals that can choose to deny them, the subject of the Supreme Court’s forthcoming Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt decision.
