USA – Abortion bans don’t prosecute pregnant people. That may be about to change.

Legislation in Oklahoma and remarks from the Alabama attorney general could foreshadow new efforts to punish people who induce their own abortions.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
January 13, 2023

As state lawmakers weigh new restrictions on abortion, some Republicans are revisiting a longstanding taboo of not prosecuting pregnant people for seeking abortions in places where the procedure is banned, though the topic remains divisive among anti-abortion advocates.

State restrictions have so far fallen just shy of imposing criminal penalties on people who seek abortions, instead targeting physicians, health care providers and anyone else who might help someone get an abortion.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/01/abortion-bans-pregnant-people-prosecution/

Oklahoma’s New Abortion Ban Leaves Clinics Reeling

Near-total ban on abortions took immediate effect in the state, forcing abortion clinics to halt procedures

By Jennifer Calfas
May 27, 2022

Oklahoma abortion clinics suspended appointments and are now referring patients to nearby states after new legislation quickly outlawed most abortions there.

Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, signed a ban on abortion at any stage of pregnancy into law Wednesday. It took effect immediately and is now the strictest antiabortion law in any U.S. state. The law also deputizes enforcement to private citizens, a strategy first used by Texas lawmakers that has made it more difficult for abortion-rights groups to challenge the regulations in court.

Continued: https://www.wsj.com/articles/oklahomas-new-abortion-ban-leaves-clinics-reeling-11653610467

Oklahoma GOP governor signs one of nation’s strictest abortion bills into law

By Karen Smith and Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Thu May 26, 2022

(CNN)Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt on Wednesday signed a bill into law banning abortions from the stage of "fertilization" and allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers who "knowingly" perform or induce an abortion "on a pregnant woman."

The bill, HB 4327, is among the nation's strictest on abortion and is a clear rebuke of the protections granted in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide. A coalition of abortion providers and abortion rights advocates said Wednesday evening they'd challenge the law, which takes effect immediately, in court and try to block it.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/25/politics/oklahoma-abortion-ban-hb-4327-signed-governor-stitt/index.html

Tribal Land Is Suddenly at the Center of the Fight for Abortion Access

Oklahoma's governor is warning tribes about "setting up abortion clinics" on their sovereign land.

By Kylie Cheung
May 17, 2022

Across the country, Republican governors are champing at the bit to end abortion rights in their states once Roe v. Wade falls. And in Oklahoma, the state with the second highest population of Indigenous people, Gov. Kevin Stitt is taking this crusade a step further—threatening tribes that continue to offer abortion care on their sovereign land.

“Oklahomans will not think very well of that if tribes try to set up abortion clinics,” Stitt said in a Fox News interview on Sunday. “They think that you can be 1/1,000th tribal member and not have to follow the state law.”

Continued: https://jezebel.com/tribal-land-is-suddenly-at-the-center-of-the-fight-for-1848937428

Many states are bracing for a post-Roe world. In Oklahoma, it’s practically arrived.

Already, clinicians in Oklahoma are trying to devise strategies to help their patients get to clinics in other states because of a six-week ban. But there are limits to what they can do.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
May 12, 2022

The day after the Supreme Court leak, Andrea Gallegos had already started to cancel patients’ appointments.

A draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed access to abortion, had been published online and verified by the court. In the aftermath, Gallegos, the administrator for Tulsa Women’s Clinic, an Oklahoma-based abortion provider, wasn’t worried about Roe — at least, it wasn’t the first thing she was worried about. To her, there was a bigger, more immediate threat: a six-week abortion ban the Republican governor was expected to sign any day now. The law, a direct copycat of a prohibition currently in effect in Texas, was expected to survive legal challenges. It would take effect immediately.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/05/oklahoma-abortion-clinics-access-limitations/

Oklahoma approves two laws that could immediately end all in-state abortion access

Gov. Kevin Stitt has indicated that he plans to sign both bills, which would end abortion services at clinics in the state and add to a growing abortion desert.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
April 28, 2022

Oklahoma’s legislature has passed two Texas-inspired laws that would allow civil lawsuits against anyone who might “aid or abet” any abortion. Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, has indicated he plans to sign both bills, which would take effect immediately.

One bill, House Bill 4327, would outlaw virtually all abortions, with an exception if the pregnant person’s life were in immediate danger; pregnancy resulting from rape or incest is only an exception if it has been reported to law enforcement. After amendments were added to it, HB 4327 will go back to the House, which has already passed a version of the bill. The other bill, Senate Bill 1503, would create penalties for abortions done after six weeks of pregnancy.

https://19thnews.org/2022/04/oklahoma-abortion-bans-texas-style/

As U.S. abortion access wanes, this doctor travels to fill a void

April 27, 2022
By Gabriella Borter

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., April 27 (Reuters) - Inside Planned Parenthood’s Birmingham, Alabama, clinic, a quiet space with few windows and stock photos of the city lining the walls, a woman tapped her hand against her stomach as Dr. Shelly Tien performed a surgical abortion.

Tien, 40, had flown to Birmingham the day before, and she would return home to Jacksonville, Florida, that night. A week earlier, she performed abortions at a clinic in Oklahoma. She's among an estimated 50 doctors who travel across state lines, according to the National Abortion Federation, to provide abortions in places with limited abortion access.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-abortion-access-wanes-this-doctor-travels-fill-void-2022-04-27/

At Oklahoma abortion clinics, each day could be the last for care as new laws loom

No new abortion ban has taken effect, but the impacts are already being felt in clinics across the state.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
April 25, 2022

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — The clinic had stopped scheduling patients weeks ago, but the phones haven’t stopped ringing.

Trust Women has received an average of 134 calls each day in April. Since last September, the tiny clinic in southwestern Oklahoma has doubled the number of patients it saw, thanks to a Texas law that ended in-state access to the majority of abortions and it became a critical access point for the procedure. But in March, abortion stopped at Trust Women, too.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/04/oklahoma-abortion-laws-clinics-care/

Abortion training under threat for med students, residents

The Associated Press
April 18, 2022

Browse any medical dictionary, and before hitting appendectomy and anesthesia, you’ll find abortion. The first two procedures are part of standard physician education. But for many U.S. medical school students and residents who want to learn about abortions, options are scarce.

And new restrictions are piling up: Within the past year, bills or laws seeking to limit abortion education have been proposed or enacted in at least eight states. The changes are coming from abortion opponents emboldened by new limits on the procedure itself, as well as a pending Supreme Court decision that could upend the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Continued: https://wtop.com/education/2022/04/abortion-training-under-threat-for-med-students-residents/

As Oklahoma and Idaho enact abortion restrictions, Black women will suffer the most

BY AMIAH TAYLOR
April 13, 2022

On April 12, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill that makes it a felony—punishable by up to 10 years in prison—to perform an abortion, excluding cases where there is a high risk of pregnancy-related death. The bill is just the latest example of the steady rise in restrictive measures across the U.S. that limit women’s access to abortions, especially for Black women, who are five times more likely to have an abortion than their white counterparts.

“States that enact restrictions on abortion access are not interested in supporting families, but rather in controlling the reproductive lives of women and birthing people—especially Black women and other people of color,” said Kamyon Conner, executive director of Texas Equal Access (TEA) Fund, a reproductive justice nonprofit.

Continued: https://fortune.com/2022/04/13/state-abortion-restrictions-black-women-reproductive-maternal-care/