Attempts to further Oklahoma’s restrictive abortion ban fail to cross the finish line

OKLAHOMA CITY – Despite a near-total ban on abortion, Oklahoma’s state Legislature saw dozens of bills attempting to impose more restrictions.

But none crossed the finish line to become law this session.

Bills ranged in focus, from restricting “chemical abortions” and “abortion pills” to personifying fetuses and restricting travel for the procedure. Oklahoma law bans abortion, with the only exception being to save the life of the pregnant person. It does not allow exceptions for rape or incest.

Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, attributed the lack of action to “weakness among the Republican caucus.”

Olsen has authored many anti-abortion bills, including a constitutional amendment that would have established the personhood of a fetus at conception. He is an outspoken advocate to restrict abortion access further.

“The House did slightly better than the Senate, but only slightly,” Olsen said. “We have a super majority … so anything that we as a caucus really want, we can get. So it’s just weakness among the members.”

But Sen. Julie Daniels, R-Bartlesville, said legislators were exercising caution to prevent legal challenges that end up before the state’s Supreme Court. Following the 2023 Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that abortion is protected in life-threatening situations, Daniels said legislators are watching the issue with great interest.

“I do not want to give our Supreme Court the opportunity to declare a right to elective abortion. Right now, our ability to protect life is balanced on a knife edge,” said Daniels, a member of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee and an author of anti-abortion legislation.

However, she said that there is room to further restrict abortion, specifically when it comes to clarifying current statute. Daniels said the closest thing the state has to clarity is a 2023 opinion from Attorney General Gentner Drummond that said women will not be punished for abortions.

“I believe it’s really important for us to be clear about what is and is not allowable,” Daniels said.

She said it is also important the Legislature clarify that mental health should not be included as a life threatening condition to allow for abortion.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma tracked around 70 bills relating to reproductive freedom across the past two legislative sessions, said Executive Director Tamya Cox-Touré. The ACLU of Oklahoma opposed over half.

Cox-Touré, who is also co-chair of Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice, said this session was considered a success because no anti-abortion bills became law.

“We are seeing other states propose and pass abortion protections,” she said. “So there also, I think, was a school of thought that if we create any more harm around abortion, that it’d be possible that Oklahomans would band together to try to push a proactive abortion access protection ballot initiative.”

Neighboring states including Arkansas, Colorado and Missouri have seen efforts to bring abortion-rights to the ballot in November, putting the future of abortion access in the hands of voters. In 2022, the right to abortion was enshrined in Kansas’s Constitution when voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have eliminated it at the ballot box.

Oklahoma has yet to see major pushes to bring abortion to the ballot. But conversations on possible ballot initiatives are being had, Cox-Touré said.

“We’re fighting hard because we don’t believe that our neighbors in Kansas should have more rights than Oklahomans, and we really are continuing to try to educate Oklahomans that abortion is health care,” Cox-Touré said.

She said an influx of legislation to restrict abortion can also be tied to election years and campaigning.

And although Oklahoma’s most recent legislative session was deemed a “success” by abortion-rights advocates, Cox-Touré said she does not believe it marks the end of anti-abortion efforts in the state.

“I definitely think we have very extreme conservative legislators that want to push these bans even further,” she said.