# Oklahoma Legislature Passes Bill Making it a Felony to Perform Abortions **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 19, 2016, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182 "2016-05-19T20:10:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jumpbass](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jumpbass/32/147_2.png) [@Jumpbass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jumpbass)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/21 "2016-05-20T14:59:01Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > I once met a woman and in conversation it came up that she was from Oklahoma. I said, “Oh, cool! I’ve never met an Okie!” > > Her reply was, “Fuck you asshole!” > > From the little interaction I’ve had with people from Oklahoma, they are not nice folks. According to my Dad, whose parents were from OK, the term “Okie” is an insult. ---
**Author:** ![inscrutable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a88e4f/32.png) [@inscrutable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/inscrutable)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/22 "2016-05-20T15:06:24Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > Not only that, but a total lack of funding for social programs to support the mother after the child is born. Food, medical care, daycare… make the mother pay for it! Get two jobs if you have to! It’s like they only care about the fetuses as a human beings until they are born, then they are on their own. That’s why abortion should be discouraged or encouraged, depending upon the socio-economic circumstances of the parent(s). ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/23 "2016-05-20T15:32:36Z")
> [@Jumpbass](#): > > According to my Dad, whose parents were from OK, the term “Okie” is an insult. Tell that to Merle Haggard.😃 ---
**Author:** ![Jumpbass](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jumpbass/32/147_2.png) [@Jumpbass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jumpbass)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/24 "2016-05-20T16:24:26Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Tell that to Merle Haggard.😃 Heh. I guess “Oklahoman from Muskogee” doesn’t work too well, does it?😃 ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/25 "2016-05-20T16:31:07Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I wish there were terms other than “pro-life” and “Pro-choice” to use when labeling positions on abortion. ‘Pro-choice’ is perfectly good, and I think describes you. Pro-choice means you believe you can choose to give birth. I call the other side ‘Anti-Choice’ because it is more accurate than ‘Pro-Life’ for their beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Me\_Billy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Me\_Billy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Me_Billy)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/26 "2016-05-20T17:05:37Z")
Don’t be a sucker… They always pull this stuff during elections. Gay marriage, abortions, bathrooms, etc. How many times in your life would anyone get an abortion or get married? 1/2 the population will NEVER get an abortion [men]. How many days of the week do you need a job and good economy which provides jobs? (NOTICE they don’t like to talk about these real issues during elections? They try to change the subject!) ---
**Author:** ![spamforbrains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@spamforbrains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spamforbrains)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/27 "2016-05-20T19:24:44Z")
> [@](#): > > How many times in your life would anyone get an abortion or get married? 1/2 the population will NEVER get an abortion [men]. > > How many days of the week do you need a job and good economy which provides jobs? Approximately 1/3 of women get an abortion during their lifetimes, and for every abortion, a man was involved. Often married to the woman getting the abortion. They are not uncommon at all. Not being able to obtain an abortion is a catastrophe for a woman. Women who seek out abortions and can’t get one are extremely likely to end up living in poverty surviving on government handouts- handouts the GOP keeps trying to get rid of. Or they try a DIY abortion in order to avoid this fate and therefore they may end up badly injured or dead. It’s a very important issue. > [@](#): > > pro-birth This describes these idiotic laws banning abortions after 19 or 20 weeks quite well. In a normal, wanted pregnancy, most women undergo an ultrasound at 20 weeks. This is when most severe fetal anomalies are discovered. Anomalies that are incompatible with life. Most couples faced with this situation choose to abort and start over with a new pregnancy. If these laws are in place, you have women being forced to carry severely malformed fetuses to term. Once born, they will die. And they will probably suffer a lot of pain or discomfort during their brief life. Unlike a 20 week old fetus, that is incapable of feeling pain. That is not pro-life, that is just valuing birth. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/28 "2016-05-20T19:31:00Z")
kayaker: > [@](#): > > From the little interaction I’ve had with people from Oklahoma, they are not nice folks. I spent two days there last summer, and my experience was the exact opposite. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/29 "2016-05-20T20:06:24Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Since Roe v. Wade effectively struck down all existing anti-abortion legislation, I imagine the is the equivalent of passing a law making it illegal to marry a black person to a white person. It’s probably unconstitutional and unenforceable. > > The problem is, someone has to perform an abortion and get arrested in order to test the law. A doctor has to be willing to have his privileges at least temporarily suspended. It’s going to have to be a doctor very committed to choice, and one without any dependents who will suffer if he or she loses livelihood temporarily. Or, I suppose it might be someone licensed in more than one state, but if the doctor is arrested that won’t help much. It seems silly that the President’s office is explicitly tasked with enforcing the law of the land, and yet he has no ability to enforce the Constitutional law of the land. It seems like he should be able to arrest all of the people who voted for this as willfully attempting to break the law. It’s a clear slam-dunk that they have done so. The only problem being that there’s no actual crime which is “Passing a blatantly illegal law”. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/30 "2016-05-20T20:10:26Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > Not only that, but a total lack of funding for social programs to support the mother after the child is born. Food, medical care, daycare… make the mother pay for it! Get two jobs if you have to! It’s like they only care about the fetuses as a human beings until they are born, then they are on their own. Why, it’s almost as if their _actual_ goal was to make life hard for women who get pregnant out of wedlock … ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/31 "2016-05-20T20:31:01Z")
I am thinking to post the following to [petitions.whitehouse.gov](http://petitions.whitehouse.gov). Does anyone have any better phrasing? (I’m right at the character limit): > [@](#): > > The foundation of our government is in the rule of law, and yet there is no system in place to prevent legislators from creating laws that directly contradict the Constitution. These laws will go into effect and stay in effect until a harmed party finds (and pays for) legal representation and spends (potentially) years to argue that case. As the harmed party lives within a region of the nation in which the law was voted in, it is likely that there will be popular support for the law in the place that they live and that they may be at risk from their fellow citizens. > > A representative who passes a law (other than an Amendment) which expressly contradicts established Constitutional law should be prosecutable. A Federal crime should exist under which they can be convicted and punished. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/32 "2016-05-20T20:36:57Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I am thinking to post the following to [petitions.whitehouse.gov](http://petitions.whitehouse.gov). Does anyone have any better phrasing? (I’m right at the character limit): No matter how obvious it it, the court system still has to decide if a particular law is unconstitutional. You can’t, and really shouldn’t want to, bypass the system. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/33 "2016-05-20T21:21:45Z")
The governor has vetoed the bill. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/34 "2016-05-20T21:48:32Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > The governor has vetoed the bill. Well, well. Once in a while we get a Sensible Republican Idea Of The Day (or SRIOTD). Given what we’ve read about the gov’s strong pro-life / anti-abortion record, it seems that sensible critical thinking can sometimes still prevail. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/35 "2016-05-20T21:57:55Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > Not only that, but a total lack of funding for social programs to support the mother after the child is born. Food, medical care, daycare… make the mother pay for it! Get two jobs if you have to! It’s like they only care about the fetuses as a human beings until they are born, then they are on their own. Yes, it is a shame that Republicans are pro-life on abortion and not much else, and against social programs. It’s hard to see my fellow Catholics voting on that issue alone when Republicans cause so much other destruction. I guess I am a pro-life democrat or even (gasp) socialist. And at least in our state, Catholic Charities is one of the main providers of social services at all stages of life, pre- and post-birth. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/36 "2016-05-20T22:17:25Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I am thinking to post the following to [petitions.whitehouse.gov](http://petitions.whitehouse.gov). Does anyone have any better phrasing? (I’m right at the character limit): Well, first of all, the person proposing your law would be the first victim of it: the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause expressly forbids the federal government from imposing any penalty whatsoever on a Congressman or Senator for the actions they take proposing laws. And I’ll just point out that this does appear “expressly,” in the Constitution, as opposed to the right to an abortion, which is grounded in Constitutional guarantees but does not “expressly” appear in the Constitution. So your proposal would ignore the actual written text of the Constitution to further your goal of protecting an unwritten, inferred Constitutional guarantee. If I were you, I’d think up another adjective to replace “expressly,” in your proposal. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/37 "2016-05-20T23:05:21Z")
Such a law at the state level would also have barred a state legislator from introducing measures aimed at ending segregation in the states, if those segregation measures were based on the state constitution. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/38 "2016-05-20T23:09:44Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Well, first of all, the person proposing your law would be the first victim of it: the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause expressly forbids the federal government from imposing any penalty whatsoever on a Congressman or Senator for the actions they take proposing laws. And I believe all or virtually all state and territorial constitutions and organizing acts provide the same immunity of both penal and civil action to a state/territorial legislator for what they do or say in the process of their level of legislative work (even if it involves slandering someone on a floor speech for the record, or writing down a blatant lie among the “findings” of a report, it’s up to someone else in the legislative body to move to strike that and to the legislative body itself to censure the misconduct and discipline the member). If the proposal is unconstitutional it’s up to the check and balances structure to catch it and stop it. Essentially it’s a rule so that the state does not get to arrest, nor the citizenry to sue a legislator who “violates the constitution” by proposing and voting for something that they think violates _their_ preferred protection, be it privacy, keeping and bearing arms, unwarranted searches, establishment of religion, etc. The counterbalance to that is that _there is no legally enforceable “don’t be a troll/jerk”_ provision to it; so the Oklahoman representatives \*were \*likely thinking “oh sure, it’ll get shot down; but our voters will know where we stand when the primary rolls around, and by the time it makes it to court it will have had the chilling effect; that’s a win”. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/39 "2016-05-20T23:16:15Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > No matter how obvious it it, the court system still has to decide if a particular law is unconstitutional. > > You can’t, and really shouldn’t want to, bypass the system. You say that as though the courts are uninvolved in criminal prosecutions. There would be nothing to stop the representatives from pushing their side up to the Supreme Court, it would simply be government vs. government paying the bill. ---
**Author:** ![spamforbrains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@spamforbrains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spamforbrains)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2016, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182/40 "2016-05-21T00:18:08Z")
Don’t the state legislators and senators have to take a vow to uphold the constitution? If they pass a blatantly unconstitutional law can they be impeached on the grounds they broke their vow? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-making-it-a-felony-to-perform-abortions/755182.md?page=3)