The Republican-controlled Oklahoma House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that would ban abortion in all cases except those where the mother’s life is at risk, and which will become the most restrictive legislation on the subject in the United States.
The text, approved with 70 votes in favor and 14 against, now needs to be enacted by the state’s governor, Republican Kevin Stitt, who in September last year promised to sign any legislation of this type that came to his table.
The Oklahoma proposal prohibits, with sentences of up to ten years in prison, a doctor from performing an abortion at any time during pregnancy, unless it is to save the woman’s life.
Convictions of Gazeta do Povo: Defense of life from conception
In addition, it allows individuals to bring civil suits against anyone who helps a pregnant woman get an abortion if they believe they violate the ban, and it offers financial rewards to the plaintiff if they win the case.
Abortion has been legal in the US since the country’s Supreme Court in 1973 allowed the termination of pregnancy in the country under certain circumstances, but several conservative states have imposed restrictions in the last two decades.
Everything indicates that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will restrict abortion in the country in June or July of this year, when it will decide on another Mississippi law that would limit it to 15 weeks and that therefore also contradicts the precedent of 1973.
If that happens, 26 conservative states are expected to restrict abortion. So far, the most restrictive law is in Texas, where abortion is banned as soon as fetal heart activity is detected, around six weeks’ gestation.
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