And Even More Chipping Away at Roe

[Content Note: War on agency.]

Just yesterday, I mentioned that Kansas had become the first state to ban dilation and evacuation (D&E), a common second-trimester abortion procedure.

Today, the Oklahoma legislature has passed a similar bill:

The state senate voted 37-4 on Wednesday for the bill by Tulsa Republican Pam Peterson. It now goes to Republican governor Mary Fallin, who has previously signed several anti-abortion bills.

Under the bill, doctors cannot use forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces. Such instruments are used in a dilation and evacuation procedure performed in the second trimester.

The bill would ban the procedure except when necessary to save a woman's life or a serious health risk to the mother.

Naturally, "being pregnant against one's will" does not constitute a serious health risk, according to this or any other abortion restriction, despite the fact that there are steep emotional and psychological costs, along with all the typical pregnancy risks, attendant to forcible pregnancy.

There are pregnant people who simply don't know they're pregnant until the second trimester. There are pregnant people who can't raise the funds for an abortion until the second trimester. Second trimester abortions must be legal, if Roe is not to be rendered an empty statute.

But that, of course, is the entire point.