New Abortion Law in Oklahoma Under Fire

The Oklahoma House of Representatives passed an amendment to the state's abortion law known as HB-1595 on 13 May 09. The law passed through the Oklahoma Senate on 15 May, and was scheduled to come into force on 1 November 09. Read the act here. The amendment served to establish several crucial changes to the abortion law. Firstly, prohibiting an abortion from being committed soley on account of the sex of the pre-born child. Secondly a form was set out in the Act (pages 8-17) with the requirement that abortionists fill the form out for each abortion committed, with the information being returned to the State Department of Health.

Ban of Sex-Selective Abortions
Declaring a ban on sex-selective abortions, Section 2. A. of the revised law states,

"No person shall knowingly or recklessly perform or attempt to perform an abortion with knowledge that the pregnant female is seeking the abortion solely on account of the sex of the unborn child..."

Jill Stanek commented in May that this was "the first sex-selection abortion ban to pass in the country". And the National Right to Life Committee was alluding to the gender-disbalance situation in China when it praised the law-change saying, "All over the world, millions of females are missing due to sex selection abortions". Of course the pro-abortion lobby hate this aspect of the abortion debate, because they claim that they are "pro-choice", and that abortion is all about "a woman's right to choose". They believe that the rights of the foetus are either non-existant, or so inferior to those of the mother that they are negligible. When confronted with the fact that abortion is sometimes used (legally) for the purpose of eugenics, they often don't know where to look. Feminists for Choice were all over the place,

"Now, i am just against sexism, whether in the womb or not, as anyone else, and whether you believe that gender is an appropriate reason to terminate a pregnancy or not, the real problem lies in the government stepping in and placing restrictions on the “right” reasons for a woman to seek an abortion."

Get that? They are opposed to sexism and yet they believe that mothers should have the right to be sexist when determining the fate of their pre-born child. However if abortion is simply about the rights of women to control their own bodies and the rights of the foetus are so insignificant as not to come into any meaningful consideration, then what the heck is the problem with sex-selective abortions? It will make your pro-abortion friend very uncomfortable and attempting to change the direction of the conversation. It is true that mothers will be able to keep quiet about their wish to abort their child on the grounds of its sex and instead give another legally acceptable reason for proceeding with an abortion. Nonetheless, this law-change is a positive step forward, as it enshrines in law the right of the pre-born child to not be killed for a reason based purely upon its sex.

Individual Abortion form (click here to view PDF)

Abortion Details Form & Report
The second major change to Oklahoma's abortion law is the requirement for women seeking an abortion to fill out a questionnaire. Two Oklahoma women, Wanda Jo Stapleton and Martha Hardwick in association with The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a legal challenge against the law on September 29, arguing that it violated the state’s single-subject rule which requires laws only address one topic at a time. The stated reason for opposing the law is just a convenient technicality. The real reason that the pro-abortion lobby are seeking for the overturn of the law is that it implements restrictions on abortion provision and greater transparency in terms of abortion statistics reporting. Pro-Choice of Oklahoma challenged the new law primarily complaining that the survey would compromise women's privacy, commenting,

"The reporting requirements of HB 1595 are so extensive that the reports could reveal the names of physicians and patients who perform or receive abortions in small towns..."

However this is extremely unlikely as the law comments on this scenario. It makes it clear that in situations where the information released could lead to identification of specific mothers, that the range of the information would be cut down to a level sufficient to remove this possibility in Section 5. E.,

"The State Department of Health will take care to ensure that none of the information included in its public reports could reasonably lead to the identification of any individual female..."

Feminists for Death Choice complain, "the website will cost upwards of $281,285 the first year and $256,285 each subsequent year This is an extravagent cost for a state that is already suffering a budget crisis." To put that expense in perspective, it is estimated that the legal costs for a death penalty case from indictment to execution are $1.2 million. The $250,000 expense to increase transparency in abortions committed that the pro-death lobby are waving about is less than a quarter of the expense of the US Govt. killing just one of its citizens. This is compared with the cost of creating and maintaining a data-set for the killing of aproximately 7,000 pre-born Oklahoma babies each year.

Law temporarily blocked
On 18 December 09 the Oklahoma County District Court temporarily blocked enforcement the new law until the case is heard on 19 February 2010. It had originally been scheduled to come into force on 1 November 09. This is a temporary victory for the pro-abortion lobby. If the law is thrown out on this technicality it will be able to be re-introduced following the correct protocol - which would mean that the four individual aspects covered in the bill would be split up into four separate bills and passed through the House in Oklahoma again. Of course this will all cost extra tax-payer's money, and I thought it was the well-meaning pro-abortion lobby who were so concerned about the "unlawful expenditure of public funds"...

Oklahoma is shining the light of freedom and justice, leading the way forward for the other 49 states to follow. Let's hope this pro-life change to their abortion law will be upheld, and just another step forward in the fight for the right to life of Oklahoma's most innocent and helpless citizens, it's pre-born children.