One other US state has successfully outlawed abortion after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a invoice into legislation that makes it a felony to carry out an the process, punishable by as much as 10 years in jail.
It's a part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states throughout the nation to reduce abortion rights.
The invoice, which takes impact 90 days after the Legislature adjourns subsequent month, makes an exception just for an abortion carried out to save lots of the lifetime of the mom.
Abortion rights advocates say the invoice signed by the Republican governor is for certain to face a authorized problem.
Its passage comes because the conservative-leaning US Supreme Court docket considers ratcheting again abortion rights which were in place for almost 50 years.
"We wish to outlaw abortion within the state of Oklahoma," Mr Stitt mentioned throughout a signing ceremony for the invoice, flanked by anti-abortion lawmakers, clergy and college students.
"I promised Oklahomans that I'd signal each pro-life invoice that hits my desk, and that is what we're doing right here in the present day."
Below the invoice, anybody convicted of performing an abortion would resist 10 years in jail and a US$100,000 ($134,156) positive. It doesn't authorise felony fees towards a girl for receiving an abortion.
Senator Nathan Dahm, a Damaged Arrow Republican now operating for Congress who wrote the invoice, known as it the "strongest pro-life laws within the nation proper now, which successfully eliminates abortion in Oklahoma".
Senator Dahm mentioned the invoice would apply to any physicians in Oklahoma who dispense abortion medicine to girls, which accounted for about 64 per cent of all abortions carried out in Oklahoma in 2020, the newest yr for which statistics had been obtainable.
There isn't any enforcement mechanism within the invoice for girls who order abortion medicine on-line from out-of-state suppliers. Oklahoma lawmakers handed a invoice final yr to forestall girls from ordering abortion medicine on-line, however that measure was blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court docket.
Abortion rights advocates say the invoice is clearly unconstitutional, and related legal guidelines accepted not too long ago in Arkansas and Alabama have been blocked by federal courts.
White Home Press Secretary Jen Psaki launched an announcement Tuesday describing the invoice as an "unconstitutional assault on girls's rights".
"Defending the suitable recognised in Roe v Wade continues to be a precedence for the Biden-Harris Administration, and we name on Congress to cross the Ladies's Well being Safety Act, which might shut down these assaults and codify this long-recognised, constitutional proper," Psaki mentioned.
Though related anti-abortion payments accepted by the Oklahoma Legislature lately have been stopped as unconstitutional, anti-abortion lawmakers have been buoyed by the US Supreme Court docket's resolution to permit new Texas abortion restrictions to stay in place.
'I exist as a result of my mother had an abortion'
The brand new Texas legislation, essentially the most restrictive anti-abortion legislation to take impact within the US in a long time, leaves enforcement as much as personal residents, who're entitled to gather what critics name a "bounty" of US$10,000 ($13,415) if they carry a profitable lawsuit towards a supplier or anybody who helps a affected person receive an abortion.
"The US Supreme Court docket's failure to cease Texas from nullifying the constitutional proper to abortion has emboldened different states to do the identical," Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the New York-based Centre for Reproductive Rights, mentioned in an announcement.
"We have sued the state of Oklahoma ten instances within the final decade to guard abortion entry and we are going to problem this legislation as nicely to cease this travesty from ever taking impact."
A number of states, together with Oklahoma, are pursuing laws much like the Texas legislation this yr.
The Texas legislation bans abortion after roughly six weeks of being pregnant and makes no exceptions in instances of rape or incest.
Abortions in Texas have plummeted by about 50 per cent for the reason that legislation took impact, whereas the variety of Texans going to clinics out of state and requesting abortion capsules on-line has gone up.
One of many Texas-style Oklahoma payments that's one vote away from the governor's desk would ban abortions from the second of conception and would take impact instantly upon the governor's signature.