Abortion

Oklahoma Senate Passes Admitting Privileges Bill (Corrected)

A day after the Louisiana legislature passed a bill modeled after a Texas law that has severely restricted access to safe, legal abortion in the state, the Oklahoma senate has done the same.

The Oklahoma capitol building. Shutterstock

Correction: A version of this story incorrectly noted that SB 1848 had been sent to the governor’s desk. In fact, as the Tulsa World notes in a correction to its original story about the senate’s passage of the bill, the legislation is headed back to the state house. We regret the error.

A day after the Louisiana legislature passed a bill modeled after a Texas law that has severely restricted access to safe, legal abortion in the state, the Oklahoma senate has done the same. The bill would require abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility where the abortions are performed.

Sponsored by Sen. Greg Treat (R-Oklahoma City), SB 1848 passed the state senate by a vote of 34 to 9.

An amendment that was adopted in the house that would have banned embryonic stem cell research was stripped out of the bill in the senate.

As Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, previously explained to Rewire, admitting privileges laws are at odds with best medical practices and do nothing to improve patient safety. “They are nothing more than smokescreens to their real intent of restricting access to reproductive health-care services,” said Kiesel. 

The Oklahoma senate joins the legislatures of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in passing laws that  will drastically reduce access to abortion across the South.