Showdown at the OK Capitol: Senate Prepares for Third Abortion Veto Fight with Gov.

Showdown at the OK Capitol: Senate Prepares for Third Abortion Veto Fight with Gov.

   

Oklahoma lawmakers in the state Senate are preparing for another duel with pro-abortion Democratic Gov. Brad Henry. Sources tell LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) that senators may attempt to override the governor's veto of an enhanced abortion statistics reporting law by Tuesday afternoon.

The embattled measure is designed to help the state's health and human services department gather statistical information on why women are seeking abortions, abortion-related complications, and whether abortion facilities are following standard safety protocols.

Late Monday afternoon, the Oklahoma House of Representatives overwhelmingly overruled Henry's third veto this year of Oklahoma pro-life legislation, by an 84–13 margin.

The Senate is heading for a Tuesday showdown, with the stakes being high for pro-life advocates. Unlike the House, which had votes to spare to reach its two-thirds veto-proof majority, the Senate cannot lose one of the thirty-two members that voted for the bill in the first round, in their override attempt.

The measure originally was approved with a 32-11 margin in the Senate, and a massive 88-8 margin in the House.

LifeSiteNews.com spoke with Tony Lauinger, chairman of Oklahomans for Life, who was busy counting votes on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning. He said it looked like pro-life advocates might have the votes to override, but indicated the pressure at the Capitol was intense. Planned Parenthood and abortion industry lobbyists were out in force, he said, putting heavy pressure to get just one legislator to cave and switch his vote from "yes" to "no" on the veto override.

Gov. Henry on Saturday vetoed HB 3284, The Statistical Abortion Report Act, which the state legislature had approved and sent to his desk on May 11.

The measure would require that abortionists fill out 37 questions reporting information on abortion procedures and medical safety protocols, and ask their clients for the reasons they were seeking abortion. The state health department would be tasked with deriving abortion statistics from the data, which could be publicly accessed through the Internet.

In a statement, the governor alleged that the legislation would be "forcing" women seeking abortion to submit to a "personally invasive questionnaire and posting the answers on a state website."

In his veto message, Henry particularly objected to the lack of an exemption for pregnant women who say they are victims of rape and incest, claiming it would add to "the trauma of an already traumatic event."

Many news outlets uncritically repeated the governor's claims that the bill was forcing women to fill out a questionnaire. However, the law actually places the burden of responsibility on abortionists to ask the list of questions, which women are free to decline to answer.

The data derived from the answers given would be entered statistically into an annual public report.

"Hopefully, this information will make it possible to address underlying problems in ways that could avoid the taking of an innocent human life," Lauinger told LSN in an e-mail on Monday afternoon, just a few hours before the House decisively acted to override the governor's veto.

Lauinger also lauded the fact that the measure mandates that the public have accurate data on abortion-related complications, which would help put to the test the claim that abortion is "safe, legal, and rare."

The abortion reporting provisions had been passed previously in an abortion-related omnibus bill that was later struck down by the state Supreme Court for violating the single-issue rule. That bill was then split up into a series of bills, all of which have now passed the legislature.

The governor has already vetoed two other abortion laws this year, with both vetoes overridden by the legislature. One measure expanded the state's informed consent law by requiring abortionists to perform an ultrasound on a mother seeking an abortion, and to show her the screen and give a description of her unborn child at its stage of development. Another prohibited "wrongful birth" lawsuits, preventing doctors from facing civil liability for failing to provide information that would have led a woman to seek an abortion.

Contact: Peter J. Smith
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: May 25, 2010
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