GOP Sen. James Lankford Ridicules Oklahoma Marijuana Law During Abortion Discussion, Here's What He Said

While the number of surveys showing pro-legalization sentiment among Republicans is on the rise, some GOP lawmakers are not only opposing the cannabis reform but also mocking it.

Last week, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said that the state’s medical marijuana makes it too easy to obtain cannabis “no matter what” the patient’s medical condition is, reported Marijuana Moment.

“We’re a state that has medical marijuana laws,” the senator said during the last week’s speech on the Senate floor discussing abortion rights, which he opposes. “You have to have a medical prescription from a doctor to be able to get it. So you know how you get it? The medical marijuana place actually has a doctor that you can just call that’ll write a script to you that’ll write it for no matter what.”

You could say, ‘My left toe hurts every other Thursday,’” he added, “and they would say, ‘Great, that’s a medical condition.’”

Lankford stressed that, like marijuana, it would be too easy to get an abortion if the Democrat-led Women’s Health Protection Act becomes law.

He strongly opposed a provision in the abortion-rights bill, which was blocked in a 49–51 vote on Thursday by Senate Republicans and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

This was the second time in 2022 that the upper chamber voted on the issue, but without advancing the bill. The measure sought to ensure access to abortion nationwide.

Lankford also pointed out that under the bill, the decision is up to the discretion of the health care providers performing abortions and that it would allow them to justify abortions at any point in a pregnancy.

“We get the joke. If the person who’s actually selling the product is the one who’s actually prescribing it, that means you could do it at any point,” he said. ”So this bill is not about protecting children prior to viability. This bill is about aborting at every single stage of pregnancy.”

Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America