Plenty big ticket votes await Oklahomans in November. But one key issue will be missing.

(Photo by Sofia Resnick/States Newsroom)

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-and-nail 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 2019-2020 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 or incest.

I suspect that forcing a woman to carry a nonviable pregnancy to term would be akin torture.

I know I’ll never forget the heartwrenching wailing of the woman in a neighboring obstetrics hospital room when she learned her baby had died.

I’ll never know the circumstances behind the loss, but like mine, hers was clearly a much-wanted child.

Thankfully, someone is finally doing something to try to help make it easier for Oklahoma women to access the reproductive health care they need and deserve.

A new Planned Parenthood clinic that opened Monday in southeast Kansas, not far from the state line, should make it easier for women from our state, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana to access abortion care.

Following the fall of Roe v. Wade, our state’s residents have flocked to Kansas to receive abortion care. In 2022, Kansas voters guaranteed the procedure will be accessible for up to 22 weeks.

The vote has created something akin to an lush oasis in what would otherwise be a desert region.

In 2023, Kansas experienced a 369% increase in abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. About 69% of those seeking care came from out of state.

An abortion clinic in Wichita, which has long been the closest destination for residents from Southern states, saw 81% of their patients come from other states — most of those coming from either Texas or Oklahoma, the Kansas Reflector reported.

The new Planned Parenthood Clinic in Pittsburg, Kansas, which is about a two hour drive from Tulsa, plans to offer patients medication abortions up until 11 weeks of pregnancy and eventually perform surgical ones until 15 weeks of pregnancy. To put it into perspective, most women don’t typically know that they’re pregnant until between about 5 and 7 weeks.

For many, the new clinic will be two hours closer than existing ones, which Planned Parenthood officials said will make “a tremendous difference” for a lot of patients.

After all, time away from work for any medical care begins to add up, and women often face the burden of having to find child care for their existing families when they have to travel long distances to access reproductive health care.

Unfortunately, women will still have to leave our state to gain access to that care.

And, that access is coming in spite of our state’s Republican leaders, who continue to do everything they can to make it as complicated as possible for women to make informed decisions about their pregnancies.

But I do have hope that an initiative that seeks to protect abortion access will be coming to a future ballot.

Abortion rights supporters have hinted that such a measure could be on Oklahoma’s horizon, and there’s already been one unsuccessful grassroots movement to ensure access.

So, the question is when Oklahoman voters will face that crossroads.

I can’t help but wonder which path we’ll choose.

SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX

DONATE: SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST