Harsher in Hindsight: Rick is nearly killed when his ATV flipped over by the tornado, resulting in Luke and Tammy having to revive him. In August 2022, just ten months after the film's release, Anne Heche (Tammy) died due to complications from an anoxic brain injury she sustained, among other injuries, when she crashed her car into a home in Los Angeles' Mar Vista neighborhood, in the last of three motor vehicle collisions (including two hit-and-runs) she caused in a relatively short sequence.
The storyline in which Maddy considers having an abortion dates this film to before the ruling in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion first established in the landmark case Roe v. Wade (1972).note The Dobbs case centered on the constitutionality of Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, a law passed in 2019 that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for medical emergencies and fetal abnormalities. The June 2022 ruling—occurring seven months after the film's release—resulted in many states with Republican governors and/or legislatures (including Oklahoma, where the film was made and set) implementing laws severely restricting abortion access, with many of them providing exceptions for emergency procedures or pregnancies resulting from sexual abuse or incest.note Women's rights advocates have held that these exemption clauses are too vague and make it difficult for medical professionals to consider performing an abortion procedure under specified circumstances without facing prosecution or license revocation, or being overruled by a court. These criticisms were seemingly affirmed by the 2023 case involving Texas resident Kate Cox—who sought an abortion to terminate a fetus with the chromosomal abnormality trisomy 18—in which a prior lower-court ruling granting permission for the procedure under that state's abortion exemptions was overturned by the Texas Supreme Court (on appeal by Attorney General Ken Paxton), which unanimously asserted that her OB/GYN did not adequately reason that Cox qualified for a medical exemption; Cox had the procedure performed out-of-state prior to the Supreme Court ruling.
Incidentally around the time 13 Minutes was released, the Republican-led Oklahoma legislature passed five laws, all signed by Governor Kevin Stitt, imposing near-total restrictions on abortion (including "trigger" laws designed to begin enforcement in the event the Dobbs ruling resulted in Roe v. Wade being overturned),note Senate Bills 778 (requiring an ultrasound to be performed 72 hours prior to an abortion), 779 (requiring physicians performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital in the county where the abortion is performed) and 1503 (prohibiting abortions upon detection of a heartbeat, usually six weeks into pregnancy), and House Bills 1904 (requiring physicians performing abortions to be board certified in obstetrics and gynecology) and 4327 (which prohibited abortions except for medical emergencies or pregnancies resulting from cases of sexual abuse or incest reported to law enforcement) meaning that if Maddy had chosen to terminate her pregnancy, the procedure would have to be performed in a state with less restrictive abortion laws than Oklahoma's.note Some states (including Idaho and Alabama) and municipalities (including several counties and towns in Texas) have imposed statutes allowing individuals who facilitate out-of-state travel for an abortion to be criminally prosecuted, which legal scholars have differed as to whether such restrictions violate the U.S. Constitution's Dormant Commerce Clause (a limitation on state action derived from the Commerce Clause that denies states the authority to restrict interstate commerce) and Privileges and Immunities Clause (which prohibits states from making or enforcing laws that abridge the rights of U.S. citizens, including the right to travel). The Oklahoma Supreme Court later ruled in March 2023 that the state constitution provides the right to terminate a pregnancy in life-threatening circumstances, and subsequently blocked enforcementof all five laws on this basis and concerns over their vague interpretation.
, and subsequently blocked enforcement