Did you hear? Oklahoma banned abortion!!!
…or did they?
The headlines sure make it sound like they did.
“Oklahoma governor signs bill to make abortion illegal.” (AP)
“New Oklahoma law will ‘stop the murder of the unborn,’ make it a felony to kill babies via abortion.” (LifeSiteNews)
Really?
The Pro-Life lawmakers and officials who worked to pass the legislation and sign it into law are saying that this bill makes Oklahoma the most pro-life state in the country, that abortion will effectively be eliminated, and that the ban will stop the murder of the unborn and end the massacre.
That sounds great…
… if only it lived up to the hype.
What’s the real story with the Oklahoma abortion “ban”?
If you’ve been in the fight to abolish abortion for very long, you probably learned, like I did, that headlines and political soundbites normally don’t tell the whole story, not even when they are coming from sources that call themselves pro-life.
And in this case, some of the headlines I’ve seen are VERY misleading.
I am sorry to say that SB 612, the “latest and greatest” in the long line of Pro-Life legislation coming out of Pro-Life states, is little more than smoke and mirrors.
Keep in mind what I’ve mentioned before about Politics 101.
The thing politicians learn very quickly is this: doing something makes people mad, but not doing anything also makes people mad.
Hmmm… so what do they do?
The easiest answer is to find ways to LOOK like they are doing something without ACTUALLY doing anything. It’s that simple. Watch this video for a quick explanation.
Once you start seeing politicians doing this, you will see it EVERYWHERE.
So what’s the real story with the new Oklahoma abortion ban?
It might sound stupidly obvious to ask this, but if an abortion ban doesn’t actually ban abortion or stop abortions from happening, it’s not a very good “ban,” is it?
There are two MAJOR problems with the Oklahoma abortion “ban”:
- It doesn’t stand up to Roe v. Wade—it doesn’t Ignore Roe
- It doesn’t establish equal protection
These aren’t just minor problems. These gut the bill of any real effectiveness.
SB 612 submits to Roe
First of all, it doesn’t Ignore Roe. That means if Roe isn’t overturned, Oklahoma SB 612 isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. The bill isn’t even slated to go into effect for a few months and by that time it would have been blocked by the courts.
A ban that never goes into effect doesn’t actually ban anything. This should be obvious to everyone.
Submitting to the unconstitutional Roe opinion is a HUGE problem, but it’s not the only problem with the Oklahoma abortion “ban”.
SB 612 denies equal protection to preborn babies
Even if the Supreme Court were to finally decide to overturn Roe, after 49 years of reaffirming and strengthening it, and SB 612 were to actually go into effect…
This bill does NOT treat preborn babies like human beings by providing them equal protection.
Doctors who perform abortions can be punished with penalties of up to $100,000 in fines or up to 10 years in prison. These are far lesser maximum penalties than the maximums allowed for the homicide of a born person, even for the doctor who actually dismembers a preborn child with literal innocent blood on their own hands.
Also, the bill discriminates against preborn babies by exempting mothers from any liability for their abortions.
The mother who seeks out an abortion is excluded from any legal accountability whatsoever.
Treating people differently under the law is what the Bible calls partiality. God hates partiality.
Also, remember what the Supreme Court said: "If the fetus is a person, may the penalties be different? If the fetus is a person, why is the woman not a principal or an accomplice?" [1]
The rise of self-managed abortion
But even from a practical perspective, this exemption for mothers is a MAJOR problem.
In this day and age, a bill like this just pushes women who want to abort more toward self-managed abortions. Even if it were enforced, we could call it the bill to “Make Coat-Hanger Abortions Great Again.”
Self-managed abortion, if you haven’t heard of it, is when mothers perform a do-it-yourself abortion, either with an instrument like a coat hanger or with some kind of poison. More common today, women seeking abortions are getting medical pill abortions outside the mainstream healthcare system. They never see a doctor. They never go to a clinic. They simply order up abortion pills online or source them in other ways and take the pills at home. They flush their babies down the toilet and don’t have to worry about following all the Pro-Life rules that apply if you abort in a clinic.
Self-managed abortion is obviously just as dangerous for the baby while also being more dangerous for the mothers. By keeping DIY abortions legal, laws like the Oklahoma abortion “ban,” if enforced, would push the transition from clinical abortions done inside the healthcare system much faster toward self-managed abortion. For example, after the Texas Heartbeat Act passed, online requests for abortion pills dramatically spiked. [2]
Is this really what we want: mothers ordering pills and murdering their babies at home?
Is that really the culture of life we are trying to create?
Does it make us feel better about abortion to just move it out of the public eye and off the official records so that REPORTED abortion numbers go down and we can proclaim that we are winning?
It sure seems like it based on the bills that often get passed.
Are you happy with the status quo?
Remember that Oklahoma is arguably one of the most Pro-Life states in the country. There is no meaningful pro-abortion opposition in the world of Oklahoma politics. Both the state House and Senate are dominated by Pro-Life Republicans. Every major office in the state is nearly always occupied by a Pro-Life Republican.
The question in Oklahoma isn’t, how are we going to block the big bad pro-abortion legislation?
The question in Oklahoma, year after year after year, is which of the MANY Pro-Life bills are we going to pass?
When do you think they are going to realize that passing unjust discriminatory legislation that will never actually go into effect is not actually doing anything.
Maybe the politicians have noticed it but they are counting on nobody else noticing or caring.
Everyone seems okay with the status quo.
Every year, Pro-Life legislation passes and victory is declared. And every year babies are dying—maybe by surgical tools, maybe by vacuum, maybe by pills, but dead all the same.
You know who isn’t happy with the status quo?
Abolitionists.
Abolitionists are NOT happy with do-nothing bills that make great-sounding headlines but don’t establish justice and just perpetuate the last 49 years of Pro-Life failure.
Abolitionists are NOT okay with discriminatory legislation that just pushes the abortion market to a different kind of abortion. You know who doesn’t care who performs the abortion and which type of abortion is used to do the killing? The baby.
Abolitionists are NOT okay with rejecting the commands of God and the requirements of the Constitution in order to obey an evil and unconstitutional court opinion instead.
I hope you are an abolitionist and that you will stand with us when we say Ignore Roe, establish equal protection, no surrender, no retreat, no baby left behind.
Jesus said that whatever we do for the least of these, we do for Him.
That thought should be seared in our minds every time we read a new Pro-Life bill… if we even care enough about this critical issue to actually look into the bills our politicians are passing.
I pray that God will continue awakening Christians across this country to fight without compromise, and fight to win.
For life, for justice, and for the glory of God,
Bradley Pierce
President
Abolish Abortion Texas
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/upshot/texas-abortion-women-data.html