After Governor Kevin Stitt promised to sign any abortion restriction that made it to his desk, anti-abortion politicians in Oklahoma passed a slew of dangerous, confusing, and conflicting abortion laws, including SB612, which makes it a felony to provide abortion care, and HB4327, a near copycat of Texas SB8 that bans all abortion care in the state, but goes even further than SB8 by banning abortion from the point of fertilization. These are only two of the five abortion restrictions and bans passed in Oklahoma this legislative session. Some of the bans have exemptions for rape or life of the pregnant person, and some do not–leaving doctors and patients alike in the dark about what level of care is allowed. This uncertainty is by design.
Oklahoma had been a critical point of abortion access for pregnant people needing to leave Texas for abortion care. Now, pregnant people from both Texas and Oklahoma will have to travel to neighboring states for care at clinics that are already overbooked.