Oklahoma declares anti-choice law posting details of women’s abortions online unconstitutional.

By Amanda Terkel

Last year, the Oklahoma legislature passed a controversial abortion law that mandated collecting personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and posting them on a public website. Although women wouldn’t have to disclose their name, address, or other specific identifying information, many were concerned that patients could still be revealed. The law was supposed to go into effect on Nov. 1, 2009, but delayed because of a legal challenge by the Center for Reproductive Rights. Yesterday, an Oklahoma County district judge ruled the law unconstitutional:

The court ruled that the bill passed by the legislature addressed too many disparate topics and therefore violated the Oklahoma Constitution’s “single-subject” rule which requires laws only address one topic at a time. [...]

The law also would have banned abortions based on a woman’s gender preference for her child; created new responsibilities for state health agencies to gather and analyze abortion data and enforce abortion restrictions; and redefined a number of abortion-related terms used in Oklahoma law. [...]

This is the second time in two years that the Oklahoma legislature has tried to restrict abortion in the state by bundling numerous provisions into one bill. In September, the Oklahoma District Court struck down another state law imposing various abortion restrictions, including the most extreme ultrasound requirement in the country, ruling that it violated the state’s single subject rule.

In October, ThinkProgress interviewed Oklahoma state Rep. Jeannie McDaniel (D), an outspoken opponent of HR 1595. She told us that the legislation — introduced by two men — demonstrated “a very strong feeling” in Oklahoma “that women aren’t capable of making reproductive decisions when it comes to terminating a pregnancy.”

M.C.L comments: What gets me about these pro-life folks they protest outside women clinics, they vote for a political party because they told them they would overturn abortion laws and they tried to pass laws to restrict abortion yet these people would deny the babies' mothers programs to help raise them.. Ask most pro-lifers how do they about welfare and see how they react. They want to protect the fetus but once that fetus is a actually living person they could careless what happen to him or her.