Abortion: a restrictive law ratified by the governor of Oklahoma

Lhe Republican governor of Oklahoma, in the southern United States, announced on Tuesday, May 3, that he had signed a law prohibiting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, one of the most restrictive in the country, while the Supreme Court would be preparing to reconsider this right at the federal level. “I represent all four million Oklahoma residents who overwhelmingly want to protect unborn children,” Kevin Stitt wrote on Twitter as he signed into law the text passed by the state legislature last Thursday.

“I want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country,” he said, using the phrase used by anti-abortion Americans. The text provides for medical exceptions for access to abortion, but not in the event of rape or incest. This conservative state had been welcoming thousands of Texan women seeking abortions for several months, after the passage of a similar text in this neighboring state.

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The rumor around the Supreme Court swells

Since September 2021, Texas has already put in place a law prohibiting any abortion from the moment when a heartbeat of the embryo is perceptible on ultrasound, i.e. approximately four weeks after fertilization. The legality of similar texts in other states has been studied by the Supreme Court for several months. But on Monday evening, the publication by the newspaper Politico of a draft decision of the Supreme Court on this subject indicates that the federal institution would be on the point of returning to the States the power to authorize, or not, abortions, almost 50 years after having made them legal in all the country.

The leak of this document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the Court, which recalled that it was not the final decision, had the effect of a bombshell in Washington and pushed Democratic President Joe Biden to recall its support for the right to abortion. If the highest court were to overturn the “Roe vs. Wade” case law, the country will return to the situation before 1973 when each state was free to prohibit or authorize abortion. In all, 26 conservative states, mostly in the center and south of the country such as Wyoming, Tennessee or South Carolina are ready to ban abortion altogether.

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