Earlier this week, the Oklahoma Senate passed what would have been the most draconian anti-abortion bill in the nation. It would have made it illegal for a doctor to perform an abortion in the Sooner State unless it was necessary to protect the mother’s life. However, for now anyway, that bill is dead. On Friday afternoon, Governor Mary Fallin vetoed it.
Fallin is staunchly opposed to abortion in nearly all circumstances. It’s why her veto came as a shock to many people on both sides of the abortion divide. Watch KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City report on the veto here.
However, the bill’s provisions were staggeringly extreme. It would have effectively outlawed abortion by declaring that any doctor who performed one except to save the mother’s life would be guilty of “unprofessional conduct.” Doctors who performed abortions would not only face the loss of their licenses, but could have potentially faced up to three years in prison.
This was a bridge too far even for some forced-birth legislators. State Senator Ervin Yen, a licensed physician, said that the law would be unenforceable because abortion is legal under federal law, and making it a felony to perform one “is just not gonna work.” Earlier, he told KTUL in Tulsa that as written, the bill was “no good,” and would almost certainly be challenged by any doctor who lost his license or his freedom as a result.
Tulsa attorney Clark Brewster came to the same conclusion. He told KTUL in Tulsa that “anyone with legal training” would know the 10-page bill was nothing more than “political fodder.” Even with the exception to protect the life of the mother, Brewster said the bill was written in such a way that any doctor who performed an abortion in Oklahoma could potentially be jailed.
Several people familiar with Fallin’s thought process told CNN that the governor knew Oklahoma would face massive legal bills if she signed the bill into law, given that it was a legal challenge waiting to happen. She ultimately decided that the exceptions related to protecting the mother’s life were “so ambiguous and so vague” that doctors’ hands would have been tied.
In her veto message, Fallin said that she was well aware that the bill’s real intent was to force the federal Supreme Court’s hand on abortion. However, she concluded that since the bill didn’t define “necessary to protect the life of the mother,” it ran counter to longstanding federal and state precedent requiring criminal statutes to be clear enough for a reasonable person to understand.
However, Fallin didn’t veto the bill out of the goodness of her heart. She believed that the best way to undo Roe would be to appoint “a conservative, pro-life justice” to the United States Supreme Court. She also touted her support for 18 anti-abortion bills in her five years as governor. According to Planned Parenthood executive vice president Dawn Laugens, these measures restrict abortion “through back channels”–such as forced waiting periods and a law that would effectively shutter Oklahoma’s abortion clinics.
Not surprisingly, forced-birther heads exploded. Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver accused Fallin of a “despicable betrayal,” and urged the legislature to override Fallin’s veto. The prospects for an override are uncertain, even though the GOP more or less owns this legislature. The bill passed with a veto-proof 33 votes in the Senate. However, it passed with only 59 votes in the House, nine short of the required 68-vote supermajority.
Knowing that Oklahoma has turned an unrecognizable shade of red in recent years, nothing can be ruled out. For now, though, sanity has prevailed.
