Requesting a “No” Vote on Senate Bill 1859

Requesting a “No” Vote on Senate Bill 1859

Dear Chairman McCortney and the OK Senate Health and Human Services Committee,

Senate Bill 1859 is not what the Oklahoma Baptists, the Oklahoma Association of Free Will Baptists, and the Oklahoma State Republican Party had in mind when they all passed amendments to their respective platforms in the past nine months calling for abortion’s total and immediate abolition. They were demanding Senate Bill 13. The thousands of Oklahomans at the State Capitol last Tuesday were not at your office door asking you to fiddle with the health codes and redefine “professional conduct,” as SB1859 does. They were demanding that you treat abortion like what it is – murder. They were demanding the passage and enforcement of SB13.

What you’ve done instead is you’ve begun the process of killing SB13 and you’ve offered a lesser substitute bill in its place. The Christians of Oklahoma will not be appeased or fooled by it.

Compromise with abortion is iniquitous, but it’s also political folly. As demonstrated by the various organizations’ platform changes and the enormous crowd last Tuesday, the paradigm has shifted and you no longer will receive praise for compromising with abortion. The Christians of Oklahoma will boo you for passing SB1859, and they will be just in so doing. SB1859 is being used as a substitute for doing what is right. It is the excuse being used to not establish justice.

In addition to it being used as a substitute for SB13, SB1859 should be opposed because:

1. Life does not begin when an abortionist detects brain waves or a heartbeat, it begins at fertilization. By not defining life as beginning at fertilization, SB1859 is a discriminatory bill that violates God’s word, and by not providing the equal protection of the law to all human beings, SB1859 is in violation of the US and Oklahoma Constitutions.
2. SB1859 contains no language defying evil and unconstitutional court opinions. It thus has no chance of ever going into effect. The courts will rule SB1859 a violation of the “undue burden” standard and we all know it. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act may have sounded good to many when it passed last year, but because it bowed to the supreme court, Planned Parenthood broke ground on a new mega center in Birmingham just a few months after its passage. The only route to stopping the bloodshed is to recognize and act upon the fact that the supreme court has no authority to legalize murder. Roe and the rest of the federal courts’ abortion jurisprudence must be treated as the legal nullity that it is.
3. Even if the bill weren’t unjust and certain to never go into effect, the bill trusts the murderers themselves to detect the heartbeat or brain waves, as if these are people who will make a good faith effort to do so.
4. “Unprofessional conduct” as a descriptor for abortion is a shocking understatement. To treat murder as something that is merely unprofessional is to fail utterly in your duties as a legislator. You are supposed to establish justice. Taking away a medical license for some abortions, even if SB1859 were to ever go into effect, is a woefully inadequate response to the mass murder that is taking place in this state.

“The life issue” is not a game. Abortion is murder. More than 5,000 image bearers of God are murdered by abortion every year under the cover of Oklahoma State law, and this will continue to be the case for as long as this state government delays abolition. There are some in this legislative body who are intentionally supporting incremental compromise bills as part of a concerted effort to appease Oklahoma Christians while these very same people are the ones preventing abolition. There are also some who have good intentions but errantly think we should try to make compromises where we can make them. We plead to those with good intentions to understand that the practical function of bills like SB1859 is to delay abolition and enable those who oppose abolishing abortion, and we plead to those intentionally playing political games with the lives of preborn children to turn from that and wield their authority justly going forward. We will not turn anyone who does the right thing away because of past differences. We will honor you if you do what is right and actions taken previously will be water under the bridge.

The first step toward the bloodshed stopping is this substitute bill being voted down. SB1859 is the unjust, inadequate substitute being put forward instead of the only bill that establishes justice for preborn human beings. This is no longer lost on the Christians of Oklahoma. They are awake to what is happening. They will not be appeased or fooled by incremental compromises bills which will never go into effect and which have the effect of delaying abolition.

Senate Bill 1859 will be opposed by the Christians of Oklahoma. You should oppose it as well. Please vote against SB1859 and give SB13 a hearing.

Yours Sincerely,