Oklahoma’s leading anti-abortion group is pushing GOP lawmakers to loosen the state’s near-total ban.
In a recent letter to legislators, Oklahomans for Life Chair Tony Lauinger argued that if they don’t amend the state’s anti-abortion law to add exceptions for rape and incest, there is a real chance a citizen-led ballot initiative to make all abortion legal will eventually succeed.
His efforts, which other lawmakers and anti-abortion groups have slammed as immoral and politically naive, are the latest example of the national scramble to prevent voters from restoring abortion access by popular vote.
Legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma are debating bills this session that would hike the filing fees, raise the number of signatures required to get on the ballot, restrict who can collect signatures, mandate broader geographic distribution of signatures, and raise the vote threshold to pass an amendment from a majority to a supermajority. While the bills vary in wording, they would have the same impact: limiting voters’ power to override abortion restrictions that Republicans imposed, which took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
After watching the pro-abortion rights side win all six ballot initiative fights related to abortion in 2022 — including in conservative states such as Kansas and Kentucky — conservatives fear, and are mobilizing to avoid, a repeat.
“It was a wake-up call that taught us we have a ton of work to do,” said Kelsey Pritchard, the state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on ballot initiative fights on abortion over the next two years. “We’re going to be really engaged on these ballot measures that are often very radical and go far beyond what Roe ever did.”
In Mississippi, where a court order froze all ballot efforts in 2021, GOP lawmakers are advancing legislation that would restore the mechanism but prohibit voters from putting abortion-related measures on the ballot.