We Engage took the Pink House Defenders on the road and decided to go to Oklahoma. A lot of people wonder “why?” With all the issues going on in Mississippi, why take the time and trouble to travel to Oklahoma and stage a repro rights rally there?

Well, quite a few reasons, and in the end, for a reason we didn’t even realize. We learned so many things.

Number one, the anti-abortion rally “Abolition Day” was just one day of a week of activities called “Abolition NOW,” spearheaded by Free the States, which is really just the anti-abortion extremist group Abolish Human Abortion rebranded as a slick 501c4 lobbying organization.

Free the States was joined by Operation Save America and Apologia Ministries, both well organized and well-financed evangelical fundamentalist Christian anti-abortion groups. This event was the first time all three of these groups have worked together, and they came together to push legislation banning abortion in Oklahoma, Senate bill 13 (SB13).

And the legislation they are pushing makes no exceptions for rape, incest, and criminalizes abortion as murder for the physician and the patient; it barely makes an exception for the life of the mother. The bill also requires the state to ignore any federal court decisions regarding SB13, in effect – it requires Oklahoma to defy the federal government.

Oklahoma is one of eight states these religious extremists have managed to have this legislation introduced - Oklahoma, Texas, Indiana, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Missouri, and Utah.

And this is part of a larger sustained push on the antis’ part. For instance, Indiana has introduced House Bill 1089. Same exact bill, we posted about it earlier this year. Operation Save America is taking March off, but guess where their next event is? Indiana - to lobby for the passage of HB 1089.

As far as we can tell, if We Engage had not traveled to Oklahoma, all the media would have been able to report was that a thousand antis were at the Capitol, rallying to ban abortion, without ANY pro-choice presence.

If “we the pro-choice people” don’t show up and make OUR voices heard, both in the halls of the legislatures and in the public eye, we can kiss safe, legal abortion access good-bye.