Oklahoma Bans Abortion Outright

by JASmius



Wow.  And you thought South Carolina was riding the ragged edge of pro-life defiance.

I'll say this for the Sooner legislature: They're sure taking big bites now:

Any doctor who performs an abortion in Oklahoma could be charged with a felony and punished with up to three years in prison under a bill that the Legislature passed Thursday.

The measure is the first of its kind in the nation, according to [pro-infanticide] group Center for Reproductive Rights. The bill also would restrict any physician who performs an abortion from obtaining or renewing a license to practice medicine in Oklahoma.

With no discussion or debate, the Senate voted 33-12 Thursday for the bill by Republican Senator Nathan Dahm. A handful of Republicans joined with Democrats in voting against the bill, which now heads to Governor Mary Fallin, a [pro-life] Republican. Fallin spokesman Michael McNutt said the governor will withhold comment until her staff has time to review it.

Uh-oh.  Keep a finger stuck in this page, as we may soon be revisiting it.

"Since I believe life begins at conception, it should be protected, and I believe it's a core function of State government to defend that life from the beginning of conception," said Dahm, R-Broken Arrow.

Sounds pretty straight-forward.  Which it is, really.

Abortion rights supporters have said the bill is unconstitutional and will be challenged immediately. Senator Ervin Yen, an Oklahoma City Republican and the only physician in the Senate, described the measure as "insane" and voted against it.

Of course, baby-killers were going to call the bill "unconstitutional," because that term has been "fundamentally transformed" to mean "opposes the leftwingnut" agenda by fellow-travelers who believe that the Supreme Court wrote and writes the Constitution as it goes, not the Founding Fathers, who were all white, European slaveholders anyway.

But the baby-killers are also right that the bill will be challenged and injuncted immediately.  But then, it was always intended to be a canary in the coal mine anyway, as Senator Dahm himself admitted:

Dahm says he's hopeful the measure could lead to overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that [illegally imposed] abortion nationwide.

Is he right?  Hard to say.  Oklahoma is in the tenth federal appeals circuit, which has a razor-thin 11-10 Republican(-appointed) majority, so theoretically it could go either way.  In practice, the judicial review mentality is so pervasive that the State will have to buck it all the way up to Olympus, where "Swingin' Tony" Kennedy would probably flip against it anyway, probably along with Chief Justice Roberts.  So unless Oklahoma Republicans were willing to simply nullify Roe v. Wade, I'm afraid this victory is as pyrrhic as it is temporary.

But it is ballsy, nonetheless, and newsworthy on what is proving to not be a slow blogfoddering day.