A proposed law to charge women who get abortions with homicide was rejected by the Oklahoma State Senate Judiciary Committee.
Senate Bill 456, the “Abolition of Abortion Act,” authored by Republican state Sen. Dusty Deevers, failed on a six-to-two vote.
Oklahoma law considers unborn children as people from conception.
The law currently states that “a legal abortion to which the pregnant woman consented” is not legally a homicide. It also states that “under no circumstances shall the mother of the unborn child be prosecuted” unless she commits a crime that causes the death.
Deevers’ bill would have repealed the abortion exclusion and the section prohibiting the mother’s prosecution. He said the law was based on the personhood of the unborn.
The bill also stated that “even where the charge is murder, the provisions of this section shall apply if the victim is an unborn child and the defendant is the child’s mother.”
This provision protects a mother from prosecution even if someone else is charged in connection with the abortion.
Deevers said SB 456 was meant to close a loophole left after the legislature adopted one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the nation on April 26, 2022.
He said thousands of women have purchased so-called “morning after” pills and terminated pregnancies on their own. This includes women in states that restrict abortion, such as Oklahoma.
According to Deevers, this denies unborn children equal protection under the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“Children are being murdered in our state,” Deevers told the committee. “Preborn children are just as much human as you or me.”
Throughout his presentation, Deevers—an ordained Southern Baptist minister—quoted The Bible, saying that God would hold those who failed to act accountable.
“I’m not concerned about a ballot initiative. I’m most concerned about how I stand before God,” Deevers said.
Those who voted against SB 456 said they shared Deevers’s desire to reduce abortions but disagreed with his method.
Democrat Sen. Mary Boren said prosecuting women would exacerbate what is already a crisis. She said she has known many young women who were forced out of college or a job because of an unplanned pregnancy.
According to Boren, the bill would also discourage doctors from practicing in the state and cost lives by denying medically necessary abortions to women who need them.
Boren added that giving the unborn legal personhood could be problematic. She said if an unborn child is considered a person, then miscarriages would have to be investigated by law enforcement to ensure that a crime had not been committed.
“Changing personhood from birth to conception will cause all miscarriages to be presumed murders,” Boren said.
Republican State Sen. Todd Gollihare, the committee’s vice-chairman, said he also wants to see abortion eliminated but Deevers’s bill failed to address many factors.
The bill wouldn’t stop pharmaceutical companies from selling abortion pills in the state, Gollihare said. It also did not provide any exception for abortion to preserve the life of the mother.
Gollihare pointed out that Oklahoma can impose the death penalty for a murder conviction. He expressed reservations about charging a woman with murder for getting an abortion.
“I disagree with you on the path, not the destination. I cannot go with you down this road of executing women,” he told Deevers.
Deevers said that his bill makes exceptions for deaths due to miscarriage or medical complications. As for capital punishment, he pointed out that the legislature sets the penalties for crime.
State Sen. Shane Jett, a Republican from Shawnee, said the Roe v. Wade decision did more to victimize women than any prohibition on abortion would do.
Jett told the committee that “it’s not easy to take a life.” He said God designed people to find killing repellant.
According to Jett, millions of American women are living with guilt over a killing that society told them was acceptable.
“Sixty million babies, 60 million Americans never breathed or lived in the light of liberty because of these lies. We need to undo the lie that was told 50 years ago,” Jett said.
Deevers said he would continue pushing his bill as long as voters send him to the legislature. He said the fact that state leaders were discussing such a difficult subject was a step forward.
“The truth was clearly stated. The heart of this bill is to love our preborn neighbors as ourselves,” Deevers told The Epoch Times.
Oklahoma is the fourth state to consider such a law. Indiana, North Dakota, and South Carolina’s legislatures have had similar bills introduced. Indiana and South Carolina’s bills are in committee.
North Dakota’s House of Representatives rejected the measure 77 to 16 on Feb. 12.
