Oklahoma and the law for public abortions

Although the Roe v. Wade ruling grants women the basic right to terminate any pregnancy for any reason they choose (at least until the fetus becomes viable, whereupon waters grow murkier), this doesn’t stop legislatures from imposing all sorts of restrictions, financial or otherwise, to make sure that getting an abortion is generally a pain in the ass. Oklahoma is known for its particularly hostile laws regarding abortion rights, yet it turns out that there’s one law that’s particularly wretched: the one that states that an abortion patient’s information pertaining to why they terminated their pregnancy can be freely posted online on a state website. I just know I’m not the only one who literally said ‘What the fuck?!’ when I read that – has anyone there ever heard of patient confidentiality, for fuck’s sake?

The state of Oklahoma legislature passed a law currently that allows an abortion patient's information as to why they chose to have the procedure to posted on the internet, according to NPR News. After taking a long survey, the answers given will be posted on a state website after the procedure is done. Names will be omitted but to have the reasons why someone is having a routine medical procedure is "intolerable" according to abortion rights activists. Oklahoma has some of the toughest abortion laws in the United States.

On the other side of the aisle, Oklahoma State Representative Dan Sullivan told NPR, "This is not going in to get a wart removed. This is a procedure that ends a human life." He supports the law and says it is valid. Today, the lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights will be heard in Oklahoma County as to uphold a temporary injunction and then a motion to dismiss the law altogether according to CNN.

This is bullshit. A fetus is NOT a human life. It could eventually develop into a human, but it is not a human, yet. It is a shapeless, unfeeling, unknowing and completely uncaring clump of cells, no more biologically important than a blastoma. Merely possessing the Homo sapiens genome is not enough to qualify something as a human being. Every single other characteristic – shape, size, intelligence, emotions, mobility, whatever – is completely absent. It is a human-to-be, nothing more. It is to a human what a seed is to a tree.

Abortion is not murder, and destroying a fetus is not killing a human. Will someone please educate anti-abortionist morons in the government such as this Rep. Dan Sullivan with this simple and obvious fact?

But regardless, the morality of abortion is not the issue at hand, here. The point is that incredibly private medical records, which are reserved for attending doctors’ eyes only, are being posted online for anyone to see, which is completely unacceptable. This is obviously nothing more than a slimy attempt at discouraging women who need to terminate their pregnancy with the threat of having their private ordeal made public. If the legislation wants to stop women from exercising their right to have abortions, they can create an appropriate motion or write a corresponding bill. These sorts of underhand tactics are just cowardly.

(via Fark)

Technorati tags: abortion+rights · Oklahoma · patient confidentiality · medical records · laws · Dan Sullivan