House Bill 4327 allows civil actions against abortion providers by anyone claiming to have been damaged by the procedure.
An abortion bill some are calling the most restrictive in the nation was sent to Gov. Kevin Stitt on Thursday morning by the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
Stitt is expected to sign House Bill 4327, by Rep. Wendi Stearman, R-Collinsville, which both pro and con agree will effectively end legal abortions in the state by opening providers and anyone who “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise,” or even intends to do so, to civil liability.
The bill favors plaintiffs over defendants by forbidding courts to award attorney fees and other costs to defendants, even if they prevail in court, and allows just about anyone to act as plaintiff. It specifies that a minimum of $10,000 be awarded to prevailing plaintiffs.
All of that together, opponents say, encourages meritless and even frivolous lawsuits.
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HB 4327 becomes effective immediately upon Stitt’s signature, which providers say means they will no longer be offering abortions in Oklahoma.
Stitt has already signed two bills this session imposing criminal penalties for abortion providers and one other allowing civil actions by anyone claiming to have suffered damages as the result of an abortion.
The governor has said he will sign any anti-abortion bill that is sent to his desk and that he wants Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the nation.
HB 4327 is similar to a law enacted by Texas a year ago, except the Texas law makes abortion after six weeks of pregnancy subject to civil suits.
But HB 4327 is considered by many to be stricter than the laws already enacted this session and more extreme than any other passed elsewhere in the country. It defines abortion as any intentional ending of a pregnancy between fertilization and delivery, except in cases of rape and incest when reported to police and to save the woman’s life, including for ectopic pregnancies.
President Joe Biden’s office issued a statement Thursday evening, saying that “today’s action by the Oklahoma legislature is the most extreme effort to undo these fundamental rights (to abortion) we have seen to date. In addition, it adopts Texas’ absurd plan to allow private citizens to sue their neighbors for providing reproductive health care and helping women to exercise their constitutional rights.”
Biden’s statement continued, saying: “This is part of a growing effort by ultra MAGA officials across the country to roll back the freedoms we should not take for granted in this country. They are starting with reproductive rights, but the American people need to know that other fundamental rights, including the right to contraception and marriage equality, are at risk.”
A news release on the measure says that “because civil action may be brought by any private person on behalf of an unborn child, this bill does not depend on prosecutorial discretion for its enforcement.”
But HB 4327 does not preclude prosecution of a provider under criminal statutes. “The intent of this bill is to provide an additional layer of protection of human life in addition to criminal charges,” the press release says.
The bill passed the House 73-16 with 11 members not voting. Unusually, one Republican — Rep. Garry Mize, R-Guthrie, who is not seeking re-election — debated and voted against the bill as too extreme.
“I’m going to take some heat for this, I imagine,” Mize said. “But it’s fine.”
Stearman and the bill’s more vocal supporters said it will deter abortion and “protect innocent life.”
Opponents said it condemns other innocents — impregnated girls as young as 11 — to difficult and perhaps deadly situations and could raise medical costs because of frivolous lawsuits that essentially put doctors, even those acting within the law, and their patients on public trial.
“Are you aware that girls, ages 11, 12 and 13, have the ability to become pregnant?” Rep. Cyndi Munson, D-Oklahoma City, asked Stearman. “Are you aware that children 11, 12 and 13 have been raped and assaulted, usually by a close family member or somebody close to them? Are you not interested in saving that child’s life?”
“There is nothing in this bill about taking that child’s life,” Stearman replied.
“No, it is in the bill,” Munson said. “Because if a young girl is raped by her uncle, she’s likely not going to go report to law enforcement. … She’s not allowed seek an abortion under your bill, as I understand it. And you’re OK with that?”
“I am OK with that,” said Stearman.
The Oklahoma bill says it does not apply to so-called Plan B contraceptives or to in vitro fertilization. Stearman said she did not think disposing of frozen embryos would qualify as an abortion because, she said, her bill only deals with pregnant women.
Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, said objections raised by opponents were “disingenuous,” and he accused them of “hypocrisy” and “disregard for human life.”
Rep. Forrest Bennett, D-Oklahoma City, agreed that some in the chamber were guilty of disregard for human life, but said it was Republicans using “lies, bad science, and twisted sense of right and wrong” to define a human as an egg cell that’s come into contact with sperm while “mothers are dying at unprecedented rates and babies live in poverty.”
Rep. Denise Crosswhite Hader, R-Yukon, offered her own abortion as a reason the procedure should be banned and said women who don’t want to become pregnant should not have sex.
“Sex isn’t everything,” she said.
Rabia Muqaddam, senior legal counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her organization will challenge the new law in state court, citing among other things its uneven treatment of plaintiffs and defendants and the right to keep medical records private.
Muqaddam called the Oklahoma Legislature “sloppy” for passing four different abortion bills this session. “We will be challenging each of the bills,” she said.
Tamya Cox-Toure of the Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice said it is unclear what the “aiding and abetting” provisions mean.
“If we are simply telling people about their options about where they can get an abortion, are we aiding and abetting?” asked Cox-Toure. “That question was specifically asked, with no answer. We believe we have a First Amendment right to talk to people, and we intend to continue to do that.”
Gallery: Abortion legislation in Oklahoma through the years
Senate Bill 139: 2007
Public money and institutions are prohibited from being used to perform abortions in a measure that allowed abortions to save a mother's life, as well as in cases of rape or incest.
House Bill 2780: 2010-2012
The Oklahoma Supreme Court threw out a law requiring any woman seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound within an hour of the procedure and have its contents described to her, as well as another that put restrictions on the RU-486 abortion-inducing drug, and a ban on all medication abortions.
Senate Bill 1433: 2012
In 2012 the House Republican Caucus decided not to hear a measure that would have declared personhood at conception. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that an initiative petition to have personhood declared at conception was unconstitutional. It would have let voters decide on an initiative defining a fertilized egg as a "person," thereby banning abortion and most forms of contraception.
House Bill 2226: 2013-2014
Rose Day at the Capitol in Oklahoma City is a faith-based event in which people talk with legislators about anti-abortion legislation and other issues.
An Oklahoma County judge threw out a 2013 law that would have required women under 17 to have a prescription to obtain the "morning after" birth control pill.
Senate Bill 1848: 2014-2016
The state high court on Dec. 14, 2016, struck down a law that would have required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.
Oklahoma's Senate Bill 1848, passed and signed in 2014, was ruled unconstitutional for creating an undue burden on a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. A similar Texas law had been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court only months earlier.
House Bill 2684: 2014
An Oklahoma County judge threw out a law that would have required doctors who treat women seeking a medication abortion to use a decade-old method considered less safe, less effective and more expensive. It required doctors to follow U.S. Food and Drug Administration protocols and barred off-label uses.
House Bill 1721: 2015
An Oklahoma County judge in October 2015 issued an injunction on a law that would have banned dilation and evacuation, a common second-semester abortion procedure.
The authors, Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa, and Sen. Josh Brecheen, R-Coalgate, called it the “Oklahoma Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act."
Senate Bill 1552: 2016
Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed a bill that would have made it a felony for physicians to perform abortions and revoke their medical licenses unless the abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother.
“The bill is so ambiguous and so vague that doctors cannot be certain what medical circumstances would be considered ‘necessary to preserve the life of the mother,’ ” Fallin said in a statement about the measure by Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow.
