An Oklahoma abortion practitioner is trying to stop a new law requiring abortion clinics to provide information to protect young victims of sexual abuse in the state.
The Oklahoma state law requires abortion facilities to follow a number of common sense measures, including a requirement to submit a sample of the “fetal tissue” from abortion patients younger than 14 to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation for rape investigations, the Tulsa World reports.
Dr. Larry Burns, an abortion practitioner from Norman, Oklahoma, asked a district judge Tuesday to toss out the law, according to the report.
According to the local report:
The action by Dr. Larry Burns comes after the Oklahoma Supreme Court late last month put Senate Bill 642, by Sen. Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, on hold. The measure was set to take effect Sunday.
The stay was expected to expire unless the petitioners filed in district court. The state’s high court expressed no opinion on the measure’s constitutionality. …
The lawsuit alleges that the measure violates the Oklahoma Constitution’s requirement that bills contain one subject.
“It contains four separate sections, each of which addresses an entirely different subject,” states the lawsuit, filed by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights.
According to the report, the law also makes “it a crime to assist a minor in obtaining an abortion without parental consent; requires the Department of Health to establish policies for licensing-related inspections; and establishes broad criminal and civil penalties as well as civil liability for a violation of abortion laws.”
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Sen. Treat said his bill addressed only one subject: abortion, and is constitutional.
In October, an Oklahoma district judge also put on hold a state law to ban dismemberment abortions that tear babies limb from limb, according to a local news report.
The law made Oklahoma the second state in the nation to protect unborn children from dismemberment abortions. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed similar legislation prohibiting dismemberment abortions in April.
A third pro-life law passed in Oklahoma earlier this year increases the waiting period for abortion from 24 hours to 72 hours, LifeNews.com previously reported. That law also was challenged, but the same Oklahoma district judge refused to delay that law, according to the report.
Treat, who also authored the third bill, said, “In Oklahoma, we have a waiting period for divorce of 10 days. If there are minor children it is 90 days. We should also take it very seriously when we’re talking about the irrevocable decision of abortion.”
