Q1: How is SB13 different from standard pro-life bills?
SB13 extends equal justice to the unborn by prohibiting abortion as murder. Specifically, it removes the exception in Oklahoma’s murder code allowing abortion and explicitly states that abortion is murder. It effectively criminalizes abortion. It does not regulate the practice of abortion; SB13 abolishes abortion.
That is why SB13 is called “The Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act”. Pro-life bills regulate abortion as a health care practice and impose penalties that do not treat the deliberate destruction of a human being as murder. Rather than defining and prescribing how, where, when, who, and why a baby can be aborted, SB13 illegalizes abortion. SB13 renders justice.
Q2: How is abortion defined in the bill?
Since the bill is removing the exception in the murder code, applying the law against murder to any perpetrator of deadly violence against anyone, whether unborn or born, the most relevant answer is that the bill defines that murder is prosecutable when carried out against any person, no matter their age or level of prenatal gestation.
Section 691.A of SB13 states the following:
“Homicide is the killing of one human being by another. As used in this section,
–‘Human being’ includes an unborn child…
–‘Abortion’ means the act of using or prescribing an instrument, drug, medicine or any other substance, device or means with the intent to cause the death of an unborn child…
–‘Unborn child’ means the unborn offspring of human beings from the moment of fertilization, through pregnancy, and until live birth, including the developmental stages of human conceptus, zygote, morula, blastocyst, embryo and fetus; and…
–‘Fertilization’ means the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum.”
Compare and contrast this with other laws proposed and passed by pro-life legislators, which attempt to ban certain methods of abortion like dismemberment via forceps or after a certain gestational age. These laws do not render justice but rather effectively abandon unborn children, while abortive mothers and fathers and abortionists simply work around the proscription or jump through the hoop, after which the murder of the unborn child is legal.
Q3: Why does SB13 not include any exceptions for abortion, such as allowing abortion in the case of rape, the health of the mother, or the presence of fetal abnormalities/defects?
The aim of SB13 is to render justice and protect all human beings from murder under the law. Murder is murder, whether the victim is very young, is handicapped or disabled, potentially poses a health risk to his or her parent(s), or is the offspring of a criminal. SB13 will not allow murder simply because the child is inconvenient or unwanted by his or her parent(s).
A handicap or disability would not be a death sentence in a just and caring society. Who decides which disabilities merit execution? Who determines the future quality of life and the impossibility of improvement and growth?
A mother facing challenges to her health due to a child should be treated as a patient and her child should be treated as a patient of equal value rather than as disposable flotsam.
Punishment for the gross and flagrant crime of rape should be meted out to the rapist, and it should not be legal to turn around and deal violence to a second innocent victim, the unborn child. The unborn child is innocent of any crime and is not aware of the terrible deeds of his or her father. One does not heal from being raped by attacking a child. One heals from rape by love and grace. It is absolutely sickening to see so-called feminists, who believe that the right to abortion on demand for whatever reason is necessary for women’s equality, use the wedge of the rape exception to justify what they actually believe is justifiable for any reason. Many testimonies exist of women who were encouraged to kill their child instead have found love, grace, and redemption by extending love and compassion to their own child.
Finally, legally speaking, to include exceptions like these in any anti-abortion legislation would be to defeat the entire purpose. Any abortion-minded mother would need merely to claim a past rape or obtain a prognosis of potential health challenges to obtain legal permission to murder her baby. Any pregnancy includes risks, and that is all that would be required to circumvent this law entirely. These so-called exceptions are a few of the many ways that pro-lifers have kept abortion culturally justified and legal for more than forty-five years.
Q4. What about situations in which the mother’s life is truly in danger?
These situations comprise an infinitesimally small percentage of abortions, and none of those situations are in play for those who walk under their own power into a surgical abortion facility or who purchase an abortion pill from the local pharmacy.
In a truly high-risk pregnancy, a woman who is determined to do all she can to carry her baby to term and give him the best chance at life may put herself under close medical supervision. As stated above, medical professionals should behave as they would in any other situation involving multiple patients. Many medical professionals have learned to treat the child as dispensable, but they ought to treat both patients (mother and baby) with equal respect and urgency, and work to save both lives. If, in the attempt to save both lives in the case of a true medical emergency, during which it is literally the case that seconds count, one is tragically lost, that life (whether it is the mother or the child) should be grieved. But it is never necessary to intentionally kill one of the patients. Early delivery may sometimes be necessary (and may sometimes result in the unintentional death of the child, if life saving measures fail). Removal of a miscarried child’s corpse from his mother’s body may be necessary, but actively killing a living child is not.
In a right side up world (as is the case for children post-birth) we all recognize that it is good and honorable for a mother to put the life of her child before her own. None of us would admire a woman who pushed her child into traffic to save her own life. Rather we all rightly recognize that a woman who sacrifices herself to save her child is performing the good and righteous role of the mother. The fact that such thinking is so foreign to the topic of unborn children only demonstrates how much we have dehumanized them and how we as a society have tolerated and perpetuated gross selfishness for so long.
Let us remember the words of the Lord Jesus:
“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
“Greater love has no one than that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Further, consider how disingenuous those are being who want abortion on demand and without apology. It is simply sick to use a situation where a mother is losing a child in a terrible situation to justify the choice to deliberately kill children.
Finally, it is widely attested by skilled and experienced medical professionals that aborting a child is actually never necessary for the treatment of a mother in a high-risk pregnancy.
Q5: The bill states: “It is the intent of the Legislature to… treat as void and of no effect any and all federal statutes, regulations, executive orders and court rulings, which would deprive an unborn child of the right to life.” What is that about?
SB13 asserts state sovereignty in the face of the overreach and effective tyranny of the federal government, especially the judiciary. No court, executive agent, or legislative body residing outside the state of Oklahoma has the right or legal authority to mandate that the state of Oklahoma tolerate the practice of legalized child-killing within its borders. This includes the US Supreme Court, a group of nine attorneys in Washington DC who routinely overstep their constitutional authority and frequently pervert the meaning of the Constitution.
The Roe vs Wade and Planned Parenthood vs Casey decisions should be regarded by all truth-loving people in the same category as the abominable Dred Scott decision of 1857. Would it have been right and good in 1858 to refuse human rights for African-Americans because the Supreme Court had ruled that way the previous year? Of course not. The abolitionists of slavery routinely ignored the federal government because they knew it was wrong. Will we continue to applaud the efforts of the Underground Railroad while ignoring the many lessons we can learn from its historical context?
Further, Oklahoma is not California, nor is it the 47th Federal District of Washington. The Constitution specifically denies the Supreme Court the authority to press individual states to carry out their arbitrary will. The question is: Will a state ignore and defy federal tyranny, or will all the states remain slaves?
The states of Colorado and Washington were told by the Supreme Court that their referenda legalizing recreational cannabis usage were unconstitutional. Yet walk down the streets of Denver and Seattle and anyone can smell how responsive those states have been to the Court’s overreach. If those states are willing to defy the federal government for their cannabis, can not Oklahoma do so for the sake of loving our unborn children?
Finally, we have all seen what the Supreme Court does with even the bills to regulate abortion that pro-lifers routinely put forward. The laws are “ruled unconstitutional”, even those explicitly constructed to comply with previous Court rulings. If the Court is going to shoot a bill down, it should be the right bill. And if we have the right bill and they shoot it down, we should ignore them.
The Supreme Court is not God. When they err, they should be ignored.
Q6. What if President Trump insists that Oklahoma legally tolerate abortion?
It is doubtful that President Trump would do such a thing. He would thus violate numerous campaign promises and betray a very significant portion of his donor and voter base. He has gone on record stating that this issue should be resolved state by state. We are doing exactly what we ought to do, and now is the time to do it.
But let us consider what would happen even if the President did decide to take action against Oklahoma in the wake of passing SB13 into law. Would the federal executive branch threaten the state with sanctions? Withhold funds to force the state to allow the butchery of children on pain of deteriorating roads and highways? Deploy armed federal agents?
Such things would be the moves of an overt tyrant. The state of Oklahoma would have the choice in that time to take action to uphold the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and what is more, the law of Almighty God. And what if the federal government withheld federal assistance from the state? That money was entrusted to them by the nation’s taxpayers; let Oklahoma manage Oklahoma’s affairs, and let us appeal to God for our needs and plead our case before the Almighty. Why should we bow to the evil decree of a distant tyrant in such a way when we can ask a merciful God to replenish whatever financial needs the state may have?
Q7: What will it take for Oklahoma to pass SB13 into law?
We must make the people of Oklahoma aware of the bill’s distinctives and encourage them to support it actively. State legislators must co-sponsor and commit to vote for it. They must be moved beyond the politics of pro-life compromise and resolve to take a bold and firm stand. Actions such as giving roses to representatives for regulating abortion and keeping it legal have been tried for more than forty years and found faulty. Most people have no clue that the reason abortion is legal in Oklahoma has nothing to do with pro-choice Democrats and everything to do with pro-lifers choosing not to abolish it.
The Oklahoma Senate and House are dominated by professing pro-lifers, more than two-thirds of whom included “pro-life” on their campaign platforms. The Governor and Lt Governor are also pro-life, have been for a very long time, and they all possess the power to get behind a bill like this, pass it, and then stand together in unity to become the first abortion-free state. But until the people call for such action persistently and accept nothing less than justice, SB13 will go the way of 2016’s SB1118, the first bill of total and immediate abolition, which was barred from reaching a vote on the Senate floor by Christian pro-life Republican President Pro Tempore Brian Bingman.
We have to keep them from doing this. That is going to take public exposure and education. People don’t know that their pro-life representatives are likely to ignore the abolitionist act and even work to actively oppose it. We cannot let them ignore it. We have to make them vote and then let them choose to expose themselves as being responsible for keeping abortion legal in Oklahoma. Every state legislator and especially the Senate President Pro Tempore has the power to move SB13 and the cause of true justice forward.
Stand with those who love the image of God in our unborn neighbors at the Oklahoma State Capitol on February 12th. Together we must raise our voices for those whose voices have been forcibly silenced.