By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
OKLAHOMA CITY, August 20, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - State legislators have said they will appeal a ruling made on Tuesday by Oklahoma County District Judge Vicki Robertson that struck down a state law that included numerous pro-life provisions.
Judge Robertson ruled that the 2008 law violated a state constitutional provision that requires laws to address only one subject.
Charles Price, a spokesman for Attorney General W.A. Drew Edmondson, said yesterday that an appeal would be filed with the State Supreme Court. The state will argue that the law does not violate the single-subject rule, because all its parts are connected to abortion, Mr. Price said.
From the pro-abortion point of view, the most contentious part of the legislation is giving women who are considering abortion the opportunity to see an ultrasound of their unborn child, with a description of the baby's development, before continuing with the procedure.
"Before that mother goes through the procedure, we believe it is positive public policy to give her as much information as possible about that baby," the bill's sponsor, Senator Todd Lamb, a Republican from Edmond, told the NY Times. "She might just change her mind and, who knows, that baby could be a future Nobel Prize winner."
State legislative leaders said that if the appeal was not successful, they would divide the omnibus pro-life bill into five separate bills and pass them in the next legislative session that begins in February.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Oklahoma Pro-Life Abortion Ultrasound Law Overturned
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/aug/09081905.html