Oklahoma Senator to File Bill to Criminalize Abortion in State

Photo Credit: Vidal Balielo Jr./Pexels

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Newly-elected Oklahoma Sen. Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, plans to file a bill to outlaw abortion in the state, taking the baton from Sen. Joseph Silk, who left office in November.

“All human life is sacred from the very moment of conception,” Hamilton said in a statement. “As Americans, we must stand up for those who cannot defend themselves, those not yet born, and protect their lives at all costs.”

“Abortion is an abomination before God, and something we must stop here in Oklahoma if we expect our state to be great,” he declared. “We must also acknowledge the truth that God will not bless America as long as we have innocent blood on our hands.”

He says that the bill, which will be called the “Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act/Equal Protection and Equal Justice Act,” will ensure that equal protection of the laws applies to the unborn from the moment of fertilization and will enshrine the “inalienable right to life” as equally applying to those inside and outside their mother’s womb.

The legislation will also contend that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit the states from using its “police powers to outlaw homicide” and protect all citizens within its jurisdiction.

Hamilton

“It’s far past time that we stand up for our preborn children and ensure every human being, regardless of their stage of development, is protected by our laws,” Hamilton said in a statement. “It’s an honor to fight for the rights of the unborn across the state, and I look forward to filing this bill for the 2021 legislative session.”

The measure, which must be filed by Thursday, is supported by entities such as Southern Baptists for the Abolition of Abortion, the Freewill Baptists Abolitionist Society, Oklahomans United for Life, Reclaiming America for Christ, Western Oklahoma Christians for Liberty, Congressional District 3 Republican Party Chairman Daniel Navejas, and Logan County Republican Chairman Kyle Brown.

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As previously reported, a similar bill presented by then-Sen. Silk had not been allowed to move past committee for the three years in which it was introduced.

Last year, Senate Health and Human Services Committee Chair Greg McCortney, a professing Christian who holds a Masters of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary, declined to even give the proposal a hearing, spelling its demise.

In 2019, then-Chair Jason Smalley likewise declined to allow the bill to have a hearing as he did not agree with the approach, although identifying as pro-life.

“I’m extremely pro-life. I support the efforts. I support the cause, and I do support the author. I just do not support this kind of method,” Smalley, who attends First Baptist Church of Stroud, told local television station KFOR at the time, opining that the bill put forward is “extremely unconstitutional.”

“We have other bills. There’s a personhood bill. We could look at the heartbeat bill. I mean, there’s other pro-life movement bills that we could tank up and discuss and continue that movement towards I think what we all want,” he said, “but this is not the method nor the bill to do that.”

Other groups such as such as the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and Oklahomans for Life have also expressed opposition to the modus operandi.

As previously reported, some lawmakers prefer an incremental, regulatory approach, choosing to rather regulate abortion or ban only certain types of abortions or at certain stages of development. They feel that it is all that can be done until the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

But others believe that Roe is unconstitutional, immoral and ungodly, and should simply be ignored. Silk and Hamilton are among those who have chosen to propose that the State ignore Roe and exercise state sovereignty.

HISTORICAL CHRISTIAN STANCE ON ABORTION 

Hodge

In early America, Christians were staunchly against abortion, seeing the shedding of innocent blood (Proverbs 6:16-17) and the discontinuance of a life created and given by God as murder.

In his 1869 sermon entitled “Ante-Natal Infanticide,” E. Frank Howe, the pastor of the Congregational Church of Terre Haute, Indiana lamented that “men and women place their own ease and pleasure above God’s law” and that “public opinion is so corrupted there is no voice of reproach,” forthrightly declaring, “Put what face upon it the community will, disguise it under whatever name you please, you can make no more or less of it than simple murder.”

“So low, gentleman, is the moral sense of community on this subject,” also lamented Philadelphia obstetrician Hugh Lennox Hodge in 1854 in his lecture to fellow doctors on “Criminal Abortion.” “So ignorant are even the greater number of individuals, that even mothers in many instances shrink not at the commission of this crime, but will voluntarily destroy their own progeny, in violation of every natural sentiment, and in opposition to the laws of God and man.”

Scripture, in addition to speaking on the value of the unborn, also repeatedly addresses the precursor sin of fornication, teaching in 1 Corinthians 6:13, “Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”

1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 exhorts, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor — not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God.”

Verses 7-8 add, “For God hath not called us unto uncleanness but unto holiness. He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man but God, who hath also given unto us His Holy Spirit.”

Similar bills to outlaw abortion were filed this month in Indiana, and also in North Dakota, with the latter including a life of the mother exception.

Please visit Christian News Network’s Outlaw Abortion page to help us work to abolish the worldwide holocaust.


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