Cecilia Otero an Oklahoma resident, is asking herself a lot of questions these days.

"Plan B, do I need to go and buy like, you know, a few to have on hand just in case? There's also the Plan C pill, and I'm just like, living in Oklahoma. I'm just like, well, how do I access that? And I don't know, like, my options feel very dwindled," Otero said.

At just shy of 32, she's made the call that she doesn’t want to have children. But in her home state of Oklahoma, she knows that should she get pregnant — she'd have some tough decisions to make.

"I feel like I don't have that right to choose anymore," Otero said.

And — she really doesn’t. Just about two months ago, Republican Governor Kevin Stitt signed a total abortion ban into law, enforced by civil lawsuits similar to the 2021 law upheld in Texas. It was just the latest in a string of anti-abortion bills in the state, but it’s the one that took care to a screeching halt.

Tamya Cox-Toure is the Executive Director at ACLU Oklahoma.

"Because of the fear of being sued with a $10,000 balance sheet, providers took the necessary steps in Oklahoma and stopped care on Friday when it went into effect," Cox-Toure said.

Abortion care facilities have been sitting vacant for more than a month — and even abortion care funds have been put on pause while lawyers figure out the legalities of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.

"We have no idea what assist means. So people who may donate to our abortion fund, could they be in violation of these laws? People who help someone go to a state where abortion is legal, are they now in violation?" Cox-Toure said.

Oklahoma’s Attorney General John O’Connor on Friday that he believes the law is clear.

"I would say if you put up a billboard or if you advertise that that you're going to provide abortions in Oklahoma or in another state, that you're soliciting an abortion. So law enforcement is now activated with respect to any efforts to aid, abet, or solicit abortions," O’Connor said.

There are currently a handful of challenges in front of the state supreme court — dating back to 2017. But for now, their eyes are on Kansas — the only nearby state that permits abortion. But voters will weigh in there on a ballot initiative in August that could end that safe haven.

"We would be very much the, you know, abortion access desert because of where we are," Cox-Toure said.

Should it be successful — there may be an effort for a ballot initiative here, too. After all — a recent poll showed more than half of Oklahomans did not want to see a total ban.

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Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women's and family rights in Congress, died Monday night. She was 82.

Schroeder's former press secretary, Andrea Camp, said Schroeder suffered a stroke recently and died at a hospital in Celebration, Florida, the city where she had been residing in recent years.

Schroeder took on the powerful elite with her rapier wit and antics for 24 years, shaking up stodgy government institutions by forcing them to acknowledge that women had a role in government.

Her unorthodox methods cost her important committee posts, but Schroeder said she wasn't willing to join what she called "the good old boys' club" just to score political points. Unafraid of embarrassing her congressional colleagues in public, she became an icon for the feminist movement.

Schroeder was elected to Congress in Colorado in 1972 and became one of its most influential Democrats as she won easy reelection 11 times from her safe district in Denver. Despite her seniority, she was never appointed to head a committee.

Schroeder helped forge several Democratic majorities before deciding in 1997 it was time to leave. Her parting shot in 1998 was a book titled "24 Years of Housework ... and the Place is Still a Mess. My Life in Politics," which chronicled her frustration with male domination and the slow pace of change in federal institutions.

In 1987, Schroeder tested the waters for the presidency, mounting a fundraising drive after fellow Coloradan Gary Hart pulled out of the race. She announced three months later that she would not run and said her "tears signify compassion, not weakness." Her heart was not in it, she said, and she thought fundraising was demeaning.

She was the first woman on the House Armed Services Committee but was forced to share a chair with U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Calif., the first African American, when committee chairman F. Edward Hebert, D-La., organized the panel. Schroeder said Hebert thought the committee was no place for a woman or an African American and they were each worth only half a seat.

Republicans were livid after Schroeder and others filed an ethics complaint over House Speaker Newt Gingrich's televised college lecture series, charging that free cable time he received amounted to an illegal gift under House rules. Gingrich became the first speaker reprimanded by Congress. Gingrich said later he regretted not taking Schroeder and her colleagues more seriously.

Earlier, she had blasted Gingrich for suggesting women shouldn't serve in combat because they could get infections from being in a ditch for 30 days. According to her official House biography, she once told Pentagon officials that if they were women, they would always be pregnant because they never said "no."

Asked by one congressman how she could be a mother of two small children and a member of Congress at the same time, she replied, "I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both."

It was Schroeder who branded President Ronald Reagan the "Teflon" president for his ability to avoid blame for major policy decisions, and the name stuck.

One of Schroeder's biggest victories was the signing of a family-leave bill in 1993, providing job protection for care of a newborn, a sick child or a parent.

"Pat Schroeder blazed the trail. Every woman in this house is walking in her footsteps," said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who took over from Schroeder as Democratic chair of the bipartisan congressional caucus on women's issues.

Schroeder said legislators spent too much attention on contributors and special interests. When House Republicans gathered on the U.S. Capitol steps to celebrate their first 100 days in power in 1994, she and several aides clambered to the building's dome and hung a 15-foot red banner reading, "Sold."

A pilot, Schroeder earned her way through Harvard Law School with her own flying service. Schroeder became a professor at Princeton University after leaving Congress, but said politics was in her blood and she would continue working for candidates she supported.

For a while, she taught a graduate-level course titled "The Politics of Poverty." She also headed the Association of American Publishers.

Schroeder continued working in politics after moving to Florida, going door to door, speaking to groups and mentoring candidates. She was politically active for issues and candidates across the country and campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Among other activities, she served on the board of the Marguerite Casey Foundation.

Schroeder was born in Portland, Oregon, on July 30, 1940. She was a pilot who paid for college tuition with her own flying service. She graduated from the University of Minnesota before earning her law degree in 1964. From 1964 to 1966, she was a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board.

She is survived by her husband, James W. Schroeder, whom she married in 1962. Also surviving are their two children, Scott and Jamie, and her brother, Mike Scott, as well as four grandchildren.

___

Former Associated Press writer Steven K. Paulson contributed to this report.

In May, the Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments from Mississippi's case, Dobbs v. Jackson's Women's Health Organization, in an attempt to ban abortion after 15 weeks.

This decision came around the same time Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the country's strictest ban on abortion into law, known as the Senate Bill-8. The law prohibits women from getting the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy or when cardiac activity is detected.

In a five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court declined to block the Texas ban, effectively changing the precedent of the 1973 landmark decision of Roe v. Wade that made abortion a constitutional right. The law forced many clinics to close and incentivizes individuals to enforce the ban by placing a $10,000 bounty on anyone who helps women get an abortion.

After the Supreme Court's ruling, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas to protect the constitutional rights of women.

Also, in early October, a federal judge issued an order to block the law, but Abbott immediately appealed the decision.

Similarly, Mississippi's only abortion clinic is in jeopardy. In the South and Midwest, where abortion is already difficult to access, if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it will eliminate the procedure entirely.

In December, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether to uphold Mississippi's abortion restriction. The court generally releases the majority of its decisions in mid-June.

In this episode of Clarified, learn about how the 48-year precedent of Roe v. Wade is being challenged.

Related video above: Olympic surfing bittersweet for Native Hawaiians

Johanne Defay of France was devastated when the mega sponsor Roxy dropped her right before she became a pro surfer in 2014, shattering her confidence and threatening her career altogether.

"They were just like 'Oh, you don't look this way, you know, for, like, pictures," Defay said. "And I just felt like I was never doing enough or I wasn't fitting in, in the way that they wanted for their brand."

Now, Defay is headed to the Tokyo Olympics for surfing's debut at the Summer Games, buoyed by an upset win against reigning world champion Carissa Moore at the high-intensity Surf Ranch competition last month.

Though there's much excitement and renewed enthusiasm for the women's game, years of objectification, pay disparities and an opportunity gap have taken their toll. Industry leaders from the professional World Surf League and the developmental USA Surfing say they're committed to righting the wrongs that have long held female surfers back in the male-dominated sport.

The mental, financial and logistical roadblocks for women in surfing date back centuries.

Hawaiians who invented the sport treated it as an egalitarian national pastime that all genders, ages and social classes enjoyed, according to Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, a Hawaii surfing historian. But Christian missionaries who arrived on the island tried to ban surfing in large part because of nudity — surfing naked was common at the sports' inception. Though locals largely defied the colonizers, female surfers saw their ranks shrink disproportionately.

"When it comes to controlling nudity, it's about controlling female bodies," said Walker, also a BYU-Hawaii history professor.

Even for Moore, the child prodigy who could beat the boys before growing up to be — at 18 years old — the youngest World Surf League champion in history, said she's also struggled with her body image. Moore is 28 now and has spoken openly about starving herself as a teenager, only to binge eat later, and once even trying to force herself to throw up.

"Everyone had this idea of what a surfer girl should look like. And there were a lot of 'hot lists' or the 'cutest surfer girl list,'" Moore said. "I never made them, but then you see who actually made them and you feel like: 'Oh, I guess, like, that's what I should look like.'"

Modern day professional surfing in a previous iteration had a decentralized approach that left brand sponsors in charge of many of the competition logistics, which would vary widely from one event to another, said Greg Cruse, USA Surfing CEO. And though it wasn't an official rule or standard, there was clearly a preference for the men's game.

Surfing schedules are determined in the morning based on what the ocean waves are like, and it was no secret that the boys' and men's competitions would be given the best surf conditions, usually in the morning. Female surfers took the scraps, if they were invited at all.

"There'd be the event directors and they would kind of schedule things the way they wanted to schedule and there would be bias from the outdated patriarchy. It's changed immensely," Cruse said. "It took a while for the women to complain about it."

A turning point came in 2013, when new ownership took over the professional league and the rebranded WSL began to prioritize standardizing the competitions and rebuilding the women's events, said Jessi Miley-Dyer, a retired pro surfer who now runs the WSL's competition as senior vice president.

In 2019, the WSL as the leaders of the $10 billion surfing industry also began offering equal prize money for all its events, making it one of the few professional sports leagues to achieve pay equity.

"It was an important statement to make around the value of our athletes. More than anything, it speaks to the emphasis on women's surfing. We believe men and women are valued the same," Miley-Dyer said. "It's the right thing to do."

The announcement was emotional for many, including Miley-Dyer. Back in 2006 when she won a pro event, she earned just $10,000 — a third of what the top male surfer took home.

"I cried because it means so much," Miley-Dyer said. "I had also retired, so it wasn't something for me, but it felt something to me and so many people like me."

Next year will be the first time the WSL will include its women surfers at the famous Pipe Masters competition, allowing them the chance to ride the Banzai Pipeline in Oahu, Hawaii, considered by many the best waves in the world.

The WSL has also committed to hosting the same number of events and in the same locations for both the men and women, though the competition at the highest level today still has twice as many male competitor spots — 36 — compared to the women's game.

In terms of skill and experience, the damage caused by decades of sexism has not yet been fully reversed.

It used to be that girls could begin competitive surfing training at about 11 years old while boys began as early as 4, Cruse said, adding that USA Surfing has closed this experience gap.

And surfboard makers, like many male leaders in the sport, used to believe that girls and women weren't strong enough to paddle or ride powerfully enough to pull off airs, or aerial maneuvers, so they were given bigger surfboards that are physically easier to ride, but limited their ability to progress into more explosive moves.

So while airs have for years become the gold standard in the men's competition, it is rarely done by the top female surfers today. Moore, the U.S. surfer to beat at the Olympics, is the first woman to land an air during competition, a milestone achieved just recently but has no doubt electrified the women's game and its future.

"They started demanding getting the same type of equipment that allows you to generate more speed and turn sharper and harder," Cruse said. "Right now, there's a group of girls coming up. The girls under 16 are better at airs than any of the women in the WSL. They already have the air game and it's next level and there's going to be a changing of the guard."

For Defay, she persevered during her first year without corporate backing. She remembers feeling humiliated hearing others take for granted their private car services arranged by their sponsors after Defay arrived on a two-hour bus ride in order to save money.

She's thankful fellow pro surfer Jeremy Flores helped sponsor her "insane" rookie season, as a nine-month season can cost as much as $80,000 in travel costs alone.

Now, they're equals, teammates in Japan on the French Olympic surfing team.

The 27-year-old Defay's journey to the pros has made her hungrier than ever to prove her talents and worth at the world's most elite sporting event. And she'll do it with the body she has learned to appreciate, regardless of how any sponsor may have judged her before.

Though Roxy didn't respond to requests for comment on Defay's past sponsorship deal, the surfer declares this:

"I like my shoulders now and my butt," Defay said with a smirk. "It's just what it is and what makes me surf this way, so I try to celebrate it."