The Oklahoma State Supreme Court struck down a pair of laws Wednesday that placed restrictions on abortion, arguing that they violated the state’s constitution.
Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed SB 1503 and HB 4327 in 2022 banning abortion in the state from the moment of conception up until birth, with limited exceptions, and also allowed patients to bring civil suits against doctors that continued to practice the procedure. Several pro-abortion groups filed a lawsuit to stop the bans and the state’s Supreme Court ruled in a 6 to 3 decision Wednesday that the bans were incompatible with the Oklahoma Constitution, which protects a mother’s right to have an abortion.
The justices argued that Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice v. Drummond found that a woman has an “inherent right … to terminate a pregnancy when necessary to preserve her life,” which meant that the two new laws were in violation of the state constitution because they had equal to or more “extreme language.”
“Because we hold both bills are unconstitutional under the Oklahoma Constitution, pursuant to this Court’s analysis in Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice v. Drummond, we need not reach the rest of the Petitioner’s challenges to the legislation,” the decision reads. “We grant Petitioner declaratory relief as to both S.B.: 1503 and H.B. 4327.”
Stitt issued a statement following the decision, saying that he disagreed with the court’s attempt to “create a right to an abortion.”
“I again wholeheartedly disagree with the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s use of activism to create a right to an abortion in Oklahoma,” Stitt said. “This court has once more over-involved itself in the state’s democratic process, and has interceded to undo legislation created by the will of the people. I agree with Justice Rowe’s dissent, ‘The issues presented in this matter are political questions, which are better resolved by the people via our democratic process.’”
Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond noted that despite the court’s ruling, under Oklahoma’s 1910 law, knowingly performing an abortion on a pregnant woman is still a felony, except in situations where the life of the mother is at risk, according to CBS News.
Two of the justices wrote dissenting opinions to counter the arguments made by their colleagues. Justice Dustin Rowe argued against the majority’s assertion that the new laws would have violated the ruling in the Drummond decision and worried that the court was attempting to expand “that right beyond what the Court recognized.”
Rowe also pointed out that in Oklahoma’s 1910 law, the ability to determine whether or not a woman’s life was in danger was “dictated by statute,” whereas the new laws would allow a physician to determine what was medically necessary to preserve the mother’s life.
“I cannot ascribe to the majority’s finding that S.8. 1503 imposes on a woman’s constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy in order to preserve her life,” Rowe wrote. “In OCRJ, we did not find that§ 1731.4 contained ‘extreme language’ … Furthermore, as this Court has previously upheld legislative bans on elective abortions, I find the majority’s labeling of this legislation as ‘extreme’ to be unsettling.”
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