Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry, on Thursday, signed a bill that would tighten abortion reporting requirements and ban sex-selection abortions. The bill would prohibit using abortions for purposes of sex-selection and would allow better reporting information about abortions done across the state.

The House passed the legislation 93-4 in February and the state Senate backed HB 1595 on a 34-10 vote last month.

Mary Spaulding Balch, an attorney who handles state legislative matters for the National Right to Life Committee, said the bill is important and urged other states to adopt similar legislation.

"It is unfortunate, even in this enlightened age of women, that many cultures here and abroad favor males over females. All over the world, millions of females are missing due to sex selection abortions," she told LifeNews.com. "We congratulate Oklahoma for taking this courageous stand against this invidious discrimination against women by banning the practice of sex selection abortions in Oklahoma."

She called the abortion reporting portion of the bill the "most comprehensive reporting law in the nation."

"Hopefully the information gleaned from this reported information will help us determine some of the reasons women think they need to kill their babies so that we might address those needs and save lives," Balch said.

The bill was a priority for Oklahomans for Life and its director, Tony Lauinger, told LifeNews.com it would abortion-facility compliance with existing abortion statutes.

Lauinger says abortion advocates like to talk about how they want to make abortion "safe, legal and rare" and he tells LifeNews.com that the bill "is needed to measure the accuracy of that claim."

"Complications from abortion, especially, are seldom reported, and the extent of the damage abortion does to women's health is not known," he said.

ACTION: Contact Governor Henry by going to http://www.gov.ok.gov/index.php and thank him for signing HB 1595 into law.

Related web sites:
Oklahoma Governor - http://www.gov.ok.gov/index.php
Oklahomans for Life - http://www.okforlife.org
Oklahoma State Legislature - http://www.lsb.state.ok.us

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