The bad news accumulates on the front of access to abortion in the United States. Overwhelmed Tuesday after the revelation by the newspaper Politico of the Supreme Court’s plan to revisit the Roe v. Wade, almost fifty years old, which guarantees the right to abortion in the country, the Americans took full face, this Wednesday, the promulgation by the governor of Oklahoma, the Republican Kevin Stitt, of a ultra-restrictive anti-abortion law, which comes into force immediately. A decision which has a priori no direct relationship with the leak of the day before: the text, baptized “law of the heartbeatby his supporters, had been approved by the Oklahoma legislature on Thursday and his signature by the governor was awaited.
Built on the model of that of Texas, which is among the most repressive in the country in terms of abortion, the new legislation will nevertheless have dramatic consequences for the inhabitants of this republican state in the south of the country. She aims to make Oklahomaone of the most pro-life statesof the country, according to Kevin Stitt, who uses the term favored by American conservative opponents of abortion. As of this Wednesday, abortion is now prohibited in Oklahoma upon detection of a “cardiac activityof the fetus, i.e. after about six weeks of pregnancy (before most women even realize they are pregnant), including in cases of rape or incest. The only exceptions are for medical emergencies.
As in Texas, citizens will now have the right to take civil action against anyone who performs an abortion or helps a woman on her way to abortion, for example by paying for the medical procedure. The defendants could then be asked for up to 10,000 dollars (nearly 10,000 euros) in compensation for each abortion performed. Or even worse: another law, signed earlier this year by Kevin Stitt, plans to make performing an abortion a crime punishable by ten years in prison and a fine of 100,000 dollars. But this text, supposed to apply from this summer, could be blocked as long as the Supreme Court maintains the primacy of the Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, the impact of the “law of the heartbeaton the inhabitants of Oklahoma will soon be felt. “Most abortions are now effectively banned, depriving the thousands of people who have them each yearin this state, deplores on Twitter the Center for Reproductive Rights, an organization of lawyers who participated last week in an appeal aimed at delaying the entry into force of the new law. In vain. “It’s a very serious hourreacts for his part the Democratic representative of Oklahoma Emily Virgin. People are going to lose a right that they have had for fifty years. It’s not often in this country that we back down so dramatically.”
This now means that until the Court makes a further determination, most abortion in Oklahoma is effectively banned, cutting off access for the thousands of people who seek abortion care in Oklahoma each year.
— Center for Reproductive Rights (@ReproRights) May 3, 2022
The changeover endorsed this morning “will have repercussions far beyond Oklahoma“, warns this Wednesday the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northup. Because the state of four million inhabitants has become over time the preferred destination for citizens of neighboring Texas, prevented from having an abortion in their own state. In recent years, about 40 Texan women have arrived in Oklahoma each month for abortions, according to local health department data. After a new anti-abortion law took effect in Texas in early September, those numbers skyrocketed: in September and October alone, clinics in Oklahoma saw more than 460 women fleeing ” Lone Star State”.