Feminists For Choice

We recently broke the bad news about a new abortion law in Oklahoma that requires information about women who obtain abortions to be published on a public website. One aspect of the law that has received less attention, however, is that the new bill changes the definition of pregnancy. According to HB 1595:

“Unborn child” means the unborn offspring of human beings from the moment of conception, through pregnancy, and until live birth including the human conceptus, zygote, morula, blastocyst, embryo and fetus; . . .

“Conception” means the fertilization of the ovum of a female individual by the sperm of a male individual;

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, pregnancy does not actually occur until a fertilized egg has been implanted in the uterus. Two-thirds of eggs are never actually implanted into the uterus, and many birth control methods, such as an IUD or Emergency Contraception, prevent implantation. Although the bill states that “nothing contained herein shall be construed in any manner to include any birth control device or medication or sterilization procedure,” the bill effectively does prohibit IUDs and Emergency Contraception by defining abortion as “the use or prescription of any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance or device intentionally to terminate the pregnancy of a female” when pregnancy is defined from the moment of conception.

Last year Colorado voters failed to approve a bill that would have granted personhood status to the fetus. The proposed personhood legislation would have granted full constitutional rights to a fetus from the moment of conception, thereby restricting access to abortion, Emergency Contraception, and many forms of birth control. Florida, Montana, and Colorado voters will likely be considering this legislation again in the 2010 election. But Oklahoma’s legislators seem to have found a backdoor way around the public referendum process by slipping this definition into HB 1595. When HB 1595 is challenged in court based on privacy grounds, it is entirely possible that the portions of the bill that require information about patients to be published on the internet will be stuck down, but it’s also possible that the definition of pregnancy will be allowed to stand.

Something similar has happened in Arizona. The Arizona state legislature recently passed HB 2564, the Omnibus Abortion Bill. HB 2564 has several provisions that are being challenged in court by Planned Parenthood of Arizona.

• The bill requires a 24 hour waiting period before women may obtain an abortion.
• It also requires a doctor to perform mandatory counseling in person that includes reading women a script that describes fetal development and the “risks” of abortion (including so-called risks of depression and suicide, despite scientific proof to the contrary).
• The bill requires that parental notification forms be notarized.
• The bill requires surgical abortions to be performed by an MD, although Arizona law previously allowed Nurse Practitioners to perform surgical abortions.
• The bill allows health care workers, including pharmacists, to refuse to provide information or access to abortion care and emergency contraceptives.
• The bill also changes the definition of pregnancy by defining a fetus as a human being from the moment of conception.

Are you sensing a trend here? All of these provisions had been previously approved as individual pieces of legislation, but Janet Napolitano vetoed all of them when she was the governor of Arizona. When Napolitano was appointed to be the Director of Homeland Security, Arizona legislators jumped on the opportunity to push through all of these abortion restrictions, because Napolitano’s temporary replacement, Jan Brewer, is ardently anti-choice.

Planned Parenthood of Arizona was granted a preliminary injunction against several provisions of HB 2564, and the restrictions won’t go into effect until the lawsuit is settled. The 24-hour waiting period went into effect on September 30, 2009. However, counseling can be performed over the phone, rather than in person, and it may be conducted by any qualified clinic personnel, rather than an MD. Nurse Practitioners are still able to perform surgical abortions. And a minor does not have to get their parental consent form notarized. However, Planned Parenthood of Arizona chose not to challenge all of the bill. The definition of pregnancy will remain in place, and pharmacists can still refuse to dispense Emergency Contraception.

Arizona and Oklahoma are not unique. This could happen in your state. That’s why it’s absolutely critical that pro-choice advocates stay on top of what’s happening in their legislatures, because abortion bills don’t always make it onto the ballot. Feminists For Choice will keep you up to date about the proposed legislation in Colorado, Montana, and Florida, and we’ll do our best to keep you in the loop about the challenges to the Arizona and Oklahoma statutes. But we need your help! If you have information about ways our readers can get involved to challenge these assaults on choice, leave us a comment or send us an e-mail so that we can help get the word out.

In the mean time, check out our friends over at Oklahomans for Reproductive Justice. They’ve definitely got the 411 on what’s happening in Oklahoma.