The governor of the US state of Oklahoma, Republican Kevin Stitt, signed on Tuesday (3) a bill that prohibits the right to abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, except in medical emergencies. The device was approved by the state Legislature, mostly conservative, in April.
Stitt’s seal comes just a day after a US Supreme Court draft leaked to Politico indicated that judges must reverse a decision that for more than half a century has ensured access to voluntary termination of pregnancy for Americans. The measure configures one of the main republican flags.
“I want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country, because I represent the 4 million citizens who want to protect the unborn,” wrote the governor on a social network shortly after announcing that he had signed PL 1503, which does not provide for access to the procedure even in cases of sexual violence.
The provision takes effect immediately, and adds Oklahoma to the list of Republican-controlled US states that, even with the precedent of the Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the right to abortion in the country, made the practice illegal or criminalized it.
The state is neighboring Texas, which last September saw a law banning abortion after fetal heart activity — around six weeks’ gestation — went into effect. The number of procedures in the region has halved since then.
Similar to Texas law, the measure passed in Oklahoma creates a kind of public surveillance, allowing citizens to sue clinics and professionals who perform abortions or anyone who helps a woman access the procedure in amounts up to $10,000 (R $50 thousand).
At the time of passage by the state legislature, Tamya Cox-Touré, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, said that if the law did go into effect, it would be devastating for Oklahoma and Texas residents. That’s because nearly half of the patients that Oklahoma centers were seeing were “medical refugees from Texas.”
An investigation by the American newspaper The New York Times helps to measure the connection between the states: in the last week of September of last year – therefore, four weeks after the Texas law came into force -, one of the main clinics in Oklahoma, Trust Women , had received 110 patients from Texas since the beginning of the month. In August, the previous month, that figure was just 11.
The number of abortions performed each year in the state, which currently has four clinics for performing the procedure, has decreased over the last two decades — from more than 6,200 in 2002 to 3,737 in 2020, the lowest in 20 years — according to data from the State Department. of Oklahoma Health. In all, 99,543 voluntary terminations of pregnancy were performed in the period.
White women aged 20 to 24 years are the ones who most access the procedure. Before the practice was banned in Texas, about 40 Texans had abortions in Oklahoma each month. The number jumped to 243 last October, according to state figures.
