You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Not even Oklahoma’s pro-life governor thinks the state’s abortion-ban bill is legit.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

A day after the state legislature passed a bill that would effectively ban abortion, Mary Fallin vetoed it. Fallin focused on a provision that would have allowed a physician to perform an abortion “necessary to preserve the life of the mother.”

“The absence of any definition, analysis, or medical standard renders this exception vague, indefinite, and vulnerable to subjective interpretation and application,” the pro-life Fallin said. She added that she still hopes for a reexamination of Roe v. Wade.

After the bill passed the state Senate, pro-choice groups and legal experts roundly rejected the legislation as unconstitutional. If Fallin were to have signed the bill into law, it likely would have led to an arduous and costly legal battle.