Tags : abortion, america
Oklahoma Abortion Law On Ultrasounds Overturned
Oklahoma City, OK (AHN) – An Oklahoma district judge has overturned a law requiring women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound and have their doctors describe to them the image of their unborn child. The 2008 law was approved by a bipartisan vote from state lawmakers, who later reiterated their support by overriding a veto by Gov. Brad Henry.
In her ruling, County District Court Judge Vicki Robertson said SB 1878 violated the state constitution’s “single-subject” requirement.
The decision was in response to a lawsuit filed in October 2008 by a Tulsa-based clinic, Nova Health Services, which is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights.SB 1878 has never been enforced since its passage last April. It was vetoed by the governor, but lawmakers overrode the veto by a 37-11 vote in the state Senate, and an 81-15 vote in the state House.
The bill was then blocked by the lawsuit, which the measure’s main author, state Sen. Todd Lamb, had said “sought to undo important reforms to provide women with information that helps them give informed consent.” The Republican cited the legislation’s protection of healthcare workers to refuse to provide an abortion, and changes in state law to “mirror federal regulations on the use of the dangerous abortion pill RU-486.”
Lamb had also dismissed Nova Health Services as a “pro-abortion fringe group” that “repeat[ed] some of the falsehoods about SB 1878 raised during the Legislature’s debate” such as claims that women are required to view their ultrasound.
An attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, Stephanie Toti, said the law was an “affront to women’s decision-making power” and had threatened to shut down the clinic, which caters to more than 2,000 women from Oklahoma and surrounding states annually.
The group also said the law would have forced some women to undergo surgery because of restrictions in the availability of the medical abortion pill.
But state Sen. Randy Brogdon said he was “deeply disappointed” with the court ruling, saying the judge had demonstrated a “kind of judicial activism [that] undermines representative government.”
“The people of this state elected us to write laws and create public policy on their behalf,” added Brogdon, who authored similar legislation in 2006. “The district court ruling claimed the bill violated the one-subject rule of the constitution, but clearly each of the provisions dealt with the same subject.”
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