Oklahoma’s November ballot will include many big items to vote on, including our next president, a corporation commissioner and our newest state lawmakers.Disappointingly an option to expand women’s reproductive health access won’t be one.Because regardless of one’s beliefs on abortion access, Oklahoma voters deserve the opportunity to vote on the path forward for a key component of women’s reproductive health care following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down long-held protections.Voters in six states have already weighed in on the issue, and as many as 10 other states could have abortion-related items on their ballot in November.But Oklahoma voters, for whatever reason, haven’t mustered the political courage, interest, or perhaps financial resources to attempt to enshrine the right to abortion in our state Constitution this election cycle.Unlike in other states where voters are fighting tooth-andnail to expand abortion access, Oklahoma voters seem content to blindly entrust the 149 people in our Legislature to continue to implement one-size-fits all decisions about what women should do with their bodies.Our Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have decided to sink our taxpayer dollars into policies aimed at ensuring women carry pregnancies to term or have fought to erect as many barriers as possible to make abortion access difficult.And, they’re reportedly eying passing more restrictive abortion policies in the upcoming legislative session that could include resurrecting so-called personhood legislation. Republicans say such legislation could give fetuses’ the same rights as their mothers and fathers. But that could also complicate IVF access, which is sometimes the only path for conception.It’s extremely dangerous to give a fetus more rights than a woman, but it’s also utterly insane to treat every woman like she’s molded from the same cookie-cutter.All you have to do is look at Oklahoma’s rising maternal maternity rates to know that something is broken. The death rate rose from 25.2 mothers in 20192020 to 31 per 100,000 live births in 2019-2021.Also, by now, we’ve all heard the horror stories about women in Oklahoma and beyond who claim they were refused abortion treatment after reportedly facing life-threatening pregnancy complications or nonviable pregnancies. Several of them spoke at the Democratic National Convention last week. In some cases, those complications could threaten their ability to have future children.Pregnancies are complicated. Providers and patients have to make a lot of difficult decisions, particularly when a wanted pregnancy isn’t likely to produce a viable child or was created out of rape ...
