Abortion in Oklahoma
"[5] The US Supreme Court's decision in 1973's Roe v. Wade ruling meant the state could no longer regulate abortion in the first trimester.
[6] The state passed a law in the 2000s banning abortions after 22 weeks because legislators alleged that a fetus could feel pain.
In contrast, The Journal of the American Medical Association has concluded that pain sensors do not develop in the fetus until 23–30 weeks.
[10] It should be stated that some research does agree with the principle of the law, including findings of the Journal of Medical Ethics, more recent evidence calls into question the necessity of the cortex for pain and demonstrating functional thalamic connectivity into the subplate is used to argue that the neuroscience cannot definitively rule out fetal pain before 24 weeks.
[11] A 2009 Oklahoma law, overturned by a federal court in 2010, would have required doctors to report information from a 37-question form about every woman receiving an abortion to the state health department for publication in an online registry.
[13] Todd Lamb, who sponsored the law as a state senator, called it "essential in protecting the sanctity of life" and "pro-life".
[15] On November 4, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the state of Oklahoma to the overturning, on constitutional grounds, of a bill intended to ban the practice of terminations of early pregnancies via medication.
[16] In 2016, Oklahoma state legislators passed a bill to criminalize abortion for providers, potentially charging them with up to three years in prison.
[17][18][19] On May 20, 2016, Governor Mary Fallin vetoed the bill before it could become law, citing its wording as too vague to withstand a legal challenge.
On April 6, federal judge Charles Barnes Goodwin blocked the executive order, ruling that the state "acted in an 'unreasonable,' 'arbitrary,' and 'oppressive' way," which "imposed an 'undue' burden on abortion access" in Oklahoma.
[21] In 2021, Greg Treat and Jon Echols authored a trigger law, SB 918[1] to repeal sections of Oklahoma statutes relating to abortion, upon reversal of Roe v Wade.
Nathan Dahm and Jim Olsen authored SB 612[2] to criminalize all abortions, with the only exception being for medical emergency.
[23][24] HB 4327 is modeled after the Texas Heartbeat Act and is enforced solely through civil lawsuits brought by private citizens, making it exceedingly difficult for abortion providers to challenge the constitutionality of the statute in court.
SB 1503, authored by Senator Julie Daniels, had banned abortion from the detection of a fetal heartbeat (usually about 6 weeks into a pregnancy).
[46][47][48][49][50] Following the overturn of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, hundreds of abortion rights protesters rallied and marched in Oklahoma City,[51] Tulsa,[52]Talequah,[53] and Bartlesville.
