Oklahoma House passes bill to ban abortion from six weeks
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – The Oklahoma House on Thursday passed a bill that would ban all abortions from six weeks’ gestation, around the time when cardiac activity can first be detected in a pregnancy, Axios reports.
The bill has been sent to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt who will sign it into law.
Like the Texas law it emulates, Oklahoma’s S.B. 1503 gets around the 1973 Roe v Wade US Supreme Court ruling which legalized abortion up to viability by giving private citizens the right to sue anyone who “performs or induces” an abortion, anyone who “aids or abets the performance” of an abortion, or anyone who “intends to engage” in helping a woman get an abortion in a civil lawsuit.
Under the law, citizens can claim $10,000 “for each abortion that the defendant performed or induced” or that “the defendant aided or abetted” in violation of the bill, Axios reports. The bill goes on to specify that defendants being sued under the law are prohibited from arguing in their defense that the legislation is “unconstitutional.”
The bill also specifies that the perpetrator of a rape or an incestuous assault cannot file suit in regard to a pregnancy resulting from their crime. Neither can a person be sued for transporting a woman to an abortion provider if they did not know the reason for the transportation, Axios reports.
Additionally, if a person provided an abortion or helped a woman get one “at the behest of federal agencies, contractors, or employees,” they also cannot be sued, Axios said.
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