In responding to a new Oklahoma law that allows women who have had abortions to sue the providers for up to two years after the procedure, a Planned Parenthood official claims coercion is never a part of “abortion care.”
Senate Bill 1728, known as the Unborn Person Wrongful Death Act, goes into effect on Nov. 1, News 9 in Oklahoma City reports. The law will allow women who have had an abortion or their family members to sue the provider if they feel the woman obtained the abortion under false pretexts or coercion.
“So what that means is if they’re lying to the woman, they’re not checking to see if they’re being coerced and performing the abortion anyway, if they’re not warning them about the psychological or physical side effect of it, those kind of things are what we’re screening for,” said Sen. David Bullard (R) Durant, who authored the bill.
The law will also have a two-year statute of limitations starting from what it calls the “Moment of Realization.”
“So, a lot of times the effects of the abortion get delayed on the woman until she realizes what it is that she has done. And so, there is a delay on that for two years on the moment of realization,” Bullard said.
Pro-choice advocates said the law goes too far. Tamya Cox-Toure of Planned Parenthood Great Plains claimed, “Coercion is not something that is happening in abortion care. Doctors and providers are required to go through a whole list of questioning.”
“Sixty-nine percent of women are coerced,” Bullard responded. “That’s according to a website called afterabortion.com. And there’s other sources too that collaborate that too.”
“He was citing a very propaganda, anti-choice, anti-abortion group that was not based in science,” Cox-Toure responded.
Planned Parenthood isn’t ruling out court action to stop the law from taking effect.
