An Oklahoma senator has introduced a bill that would charge women who have abortions with murder.
Novice Senator Dusty Deevers (R-Elgin) introduced Senate Bill 1729, also known as the Abolition of Abortion. The state already has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, allowing the procedure only in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
‘It’s very simple. It seeks to remove the exception for prenatal murder, i.e. abortion, from the murder law and ensure that it provides equal protection under the law to all lives from the moment of conception to natural death,” Deevers, a Baptist pastor, told me . Oklahoma news 4.
The bill would punish most abortions, including cases of rape and incest. The only exception would be if an abortion would save the mother’s life.
Deevers’ proposals come just weeks after he reintroduced a bill to ban the sending of nude photos outside of marriage.
Rookie Senator Dusty Deevers (R-Elgin) introduced Senate Bill 1729, also known as Abortion Abolition, which would make women who undergo abortions charged with murder
‘It’s very simple. “It seeks to remove the exception for prenatal murder, that is abortion, from the murder law and ensure that it provides equal protection under the law to all lives from the moment of conception to natural death,” said Deevers, a Baptist pastor .
The only exception would be if an abortion would save the mother’s life
Deevers argues in his latest bill that abortion is not health care.
Last year, the state’s attorney general issued an opinion saying that women should not be punished for seeking an abortion and that doctors should be given “significant leeway.”
Abortion providers stopped performing the procedure in Oklahoma in May 2022 after Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed the abortion ban into law.
About a month later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down women’s constitutional protections against abortion, leading to abortion bans in more than twenty states.
The number of abortions performed in Oklahoma immediately dropped dramatically, from about 4,145 in 2021 to 898 in 2022, according to statistics from the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
In at least 66 cases in 2022, the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the mother, statistics show.
‘We want people to get the care they need. But when we create these very limited and dangerous bills, with these limited exceptions, we know that this will have a real impact on equitable health care overall and on pregnancy outcomes,” said the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma and president of the Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Rights, Tamaya Cox-Toure, told News 4.
Rep. Mickey Dollens, D-OKC, added, “If life and death are not a health care issue, what is? If we have doctors telling patients to go to the parking lot and wait until you bleed more so we can confidently say you’re close enough to death to save your life – isn’t that a health care problem?’
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt speaks after signing a law making abortion punishable by up to 10 years in prison
After Oklahoma’s abortion ban went into effect, the number of abortions performed in Oklahoma immediately dropped dramatically, from approximately 4,145 in 2021 to 898 in 2022.
Last month, Deevers made headlines when he proposed a selfie ban unless the couple is married.
Deevers wrote the law that would make viewing “obscene materials” a crime.
It would ban the viewing or production of sexual content that “has no serious literary, artistic, educational, political or scientific purpose or value.” His proposed law would limit the distribution and production of “illegal porn” and enforcement would be possible through criminal prosecution and private lawsuits.
The law also states that any “indecent exhibition of the uncovered genitals, buttocks or, if such person is a woman, the breast, for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer.”
It defines ‘obscene material’ as the illustration or description of ‘sexual intercourse’ and this includes ‘normal or perverse, actual or simulated’.
Anything depicting sodomy and masturbation would be banned, as would films, videos, games and messages showing “sadomasochistic abuse” and “acts of excretion in a sexual context.”
Couples are exempt from the bill’s proposed ban if they only share content they have created with each other.
The ban would ban hardcore pornography, but the definition is so broad that it could also include relatively tame photos and videos.
This can involve erotic drawings, strip clubs, burlesque and drag.
Anyone who violates the law surrounding obscene material or unlawful pornography will be charged with a misdemeanor and faces up to a year in prison and a $2,000 fine.
It would also allow anyone who produces or promotes the content to be sued by any state resident for up to $10,000.
The purchase, viewing and possession offense would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to 20 years in prison or a fine of up to $25,000.