Records show the proponents of the citizen-led initiative petition notified the Secretary of State’s office on Wednesday of their plans to withdraw.
The group was led by Roger Coody, a hairstylist from Tulsa with no formal legal training who said he hoped to guard the rights of girls in his state. Messages left Thursday for Coody weren’t immediately returned.
Supporters of the petition would have had 90 days to collect greater than 173,000 signatures from registered voters to qualify the query for the ballot.
If approved by voters, it could have enshrined the appropriate to an abortion within the Oklahoma Structure until fetal viability, which is roughly 24 weeks right into a pregnancy, and invalidated any state laws that conflicted.
Political Cartoons
The trouble followed voters in six other states this yr rejecting measures to limit abortion access or supported efforts to guard it. Those states included liberal California and Vermont, but additionally more conservative Kansas and Kentucky, in addition to swing-state Michigan. In Montana, voters rejected a measure that will have required health providers to take steps to save lots of the lifetime of an infant born alive, including after an attempted abortion.
Oklahoma’s Republican-controlled Legislature has passed several laws making it illegal to perform an abortion within the state, with exceptions only to save lots of the lifetime of the mother.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material will not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
