Oklahoma Law Says Anti-Choice Posters Must Be Displayed in Bathrooms

The law says bathrooms in schools, restaurants, and health-care buildings must display anti-choice posters.

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Complex Original

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Public bathrooms are once again facing down the political battleground in which conservatives force their right-wing agendas on citizens. An anti-choice law passed this year in Oklahoma dictates that anti-abortion propaganda must be displayed in bathrooms in public schools, health-care centers (hospitals and nursing homes), and even restaurants (want some limited bodily autonomy with those fries?) by January 2018.

The Associated Press reports that the signs will tell pregnant women where they can receive services for their pregnancy, all of which will discourage abortion. The specific provision was included in a law passed earlier in 2016 as a part of the state's effort of "achieving an abortion-free society."

But Oklahoma's legislature isn't funding the material that schools, restaurants, hospitals, and nursing homes must hang. The Draconian initiative is pissing off restaurant owners, not because women's rights are being infringed upon (that would be silly), but because they will have to pony up some serious dough to the tune of $2.3 million among the institutions required to display the signs, the Associated Press reports. 

Jim Hooper, president of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association, told the Associated Press, "We don't have any concern about the information they're trying to get out to women about their babies and their pregnancy. This is just the wrong way to do it." Way to be brave, Jim. "It's just another mandate on small businesses. It's not just restaurants. It includes hospitals, nursing homes. It just doesn't make sense," he added, again, bravely.

The bill's sponsor in the Oklahoma senate, Republican (and woman!) A.J. Griffin said the bill may be "tempered a tad," according to the Associated Press. "We need to make sure we have something that's reasonable and still effective."

Prediction: The restaurants, who have money, will get out of the new mandate. Schools and hospitals, who are never swimming in cash and are more likely to be frequented by vulnerable people who may be pregnant, will be forced to hang the posters by 2018.

In a state that already has massive legal restrictions on the constitutionally protected right to abortion (including state-mandated counseling and a 72-hour waiting period before the procedure can happen), this is terrible news for reproductive rights. 

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