Oklahoma State Senate Passes 'Heartbeat' Abortion Bill

By Steve Olafson

OKLAHOMA CITY--The Oklahoma Senate approved a bill on Tuesday that would require doctors to tell women they have the right to hear the heartbeat of the fetus before the pregnancy is terminated.

The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act was passed by a 34-8 vote and will go to the Oklahoma House, where pro-life Republicans outnumber Democrats by a 2-1 margin.

The original version of the bill had required a woman to hear the fetal heartbeat before an abortion. But the author, Republican Senator Dan Newberry of Tulsa, amended the measure to require only that an abortion provider inform a patient of her right to hear the heartbeat.

Even so, Newberry said the proposed law is important to further "a culture of life" in Oklahoma.

The heartbeat is the only way for a fetus to communicate that it wants to live, Newberry said.

"It can't say please don't kill me, it can't say I want to live. It can't say anything," he said.

Martha Skeeters, president of the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice, said the bill was another example of state lawmakers placing barriers before women who want to end a pregnancy.

"They're trying to shame or humiliate women who exercise their constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy," she said.

The bill is the second anti-abortion measure approved by the Oklahoma Senate this year.

Senators last month approved the "Personhood Act," which decrees that a fertilized human egg is a person. The Oklahoma House has not voted on the bill but proponents predict it will pass.

A pro-life organization called Personhood Oklahoma is gathering signatures to force an election to amend the state constitution to define a person as any human "from the beginning of the biological development of that human being to natural death."

The petition notes that the killing of any person is prohibited without due process of law. About 155,000 signatures are needed to put the issue on the November ballot, according to Personhood Oklahoma.

A similar ballot initiative in Mississippi was defeated by voters last year.

(Editing By Peter Bohan)

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[lindsay2727]

12:55 AM on 03/09/2012

How do they propose to check if the doctors are telling the women or not. What about doctor/patient confidentiality?!

[Oldrock Mustard]

04:52 PM on 03/08/2012

America moved by religion, I thought it was just in the Middle East.

[rsargerod]

04:03 PM on 03/08/2012

In America you are not considered alive until you get a Birth Certificate and a Social Security Card.

[wisdom4you]

01:44 PM on 03/08/2012

fetus's think, and talk to themselves and to the outside world ??? Dan Newberry is obviously a nut case even thinking about such nonsense.

Fetuses can TALK ... it has a language much less a learned language that takes human children years to even learn the basics of?????

a fetus knows and is born with the particular language of the mother?????

Well then, I just guess a fetus also knows the language of the father if different than the mother, must be a bilingeral fetus????

What, when fetuses are born, do they come out and say, Hi mon and dad??? or, when the fetus is born it forgets how to talk????

[jwiggy]

02:20 PM on 03/08/2012

Come on, you know what they mean. A fetus is a tiny baby that is alive, and has a heartbeat. A real live person, albeit small. That is the point. And women need to know that their baby is not just tissue, it is a real living creature, again, tiny, and it is half them and half their partner. If they have a conscience, it will weigh heavily on them if they choose to abort. My sisters experienced
extreme PTSD after their abortions, and still do. Murdering your own offspring has to be one of the most heinous crimes of all time.

[wisdom4you]

03:03 PM on 03/08/2012

jwiggy ...no, a fetus is not a tiny baby that is alive ... 'it' is a mass of undeveloped cells only existing by reason the mother is alive, and, apparently every one but you know any fetus is in fact a cancer and will kill the host at first chance.

'Women' in fact do NOT need to know anything, which is the point in the first place, it is, well, I cannot use those accurate words in HP comments ... like you which attempt to force your RELIGIOUS beliefs on others, now, by law, which is the actual issue and problem.

And, your insult to the US Constitution, and USSC in the Roe vs Wade opinion provides that you demand this nation be a theocracy, and THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

[Jen06]

12:23 PM on 03/08/2012

Planned Parenthood clinics already require ultrasounds prior to performing surgical and drug-induced abortions. These is a 2003 study that found 99% of abortion clinics perform an ultrasound prior to performing an abortion. If there is "no medical reason" for these ultrasounds then why are Planned Parenthood and other abortionists requiring them?

[SylvreWolfe]

12:01 PM on 03/08/2012

It is Oklahoma, we passed the transvaginal ultrasound and the "A doctor can lie to a female patient" legislation long Florida, Virginia, Georgia, and other states even thought about saying it was okay for a doctor to lie to a woman patient law.

I have no issue with laws that make it an option to have an ultrasound. I don't even really take issue with making the regularly used ultrasound mandatory, if the state pays for it, and then making it an OPTION for the woman to see it. But all this mandatory crap and then "yes, you can lie to her based on your moral or religious beliefs" is a load of mysoginistic BS.

[R o n]

09:40 AM on 03/08/2012

Why all the fuss? So a doctor can tell pregnant mother she has the right to an abortion, but it's wrong for that doctor to also tell her she has the right to listen her baby's heartbeat? What are you afraid of? That it might actually impact her decision and she changes her mind? It's her choice. Some of you sound more like Pro-Abortion than Pro-Choice. Wake up America!

[SpeakupNation]

10:38 AM on 03/08/2012

What you are doing is intervening in the relationship between the woman and her doctor, and dictating to him (and to her) what he communicates to her. You ignore that fact completely.

[June25]

09:40 AM on 03/08/2012

The real question here is scientifically speaking when does life begin.By many peoples standards untill the face of the baby sees the light of day it has no more protection then a cancer in the body.

[ShinjiIkari]

10:18 AM on 03/08/2012

Life begins BEFORE conception, since two living cells need to fuse to begin a pregnancy. One thing that does not happen at conception is consciousness. It can't "want" anything.

[SylvreWolfe]

12:02 PM on 03/08/2012

Um, Ok god. Wrong, but keep thinking that.

[Alyse73]

01:17 PM on 03/08/2012

How can it begin BEFORE conception? The egg or sperm is not a person until it is fused together. By your rational a period is an abortion. A man masterbating is mass murder. And swallowing is cannibalism!

[SylvreWolfe]

12:04 PM on 03/08/2012

Science has agreed on a certain time frame. The different schools of thought are about a month total different one when life begins. But, they do agree it does not begin at conception, but before the baby is born. The round numbers between the different sciences are approximately 5 months, give or take. One school of thought says 6 months or at the start of the third trimester. That is about what all of the schools of science can agree on, about the start of the third trimester.

[Countess]

08:38 AM on 03/08/2012

When you enter the state senate of Oklahoma you must check your brain at the door.

[Pickletickle]

08:38 AM on 03/08/2012

If an embryo with a heartbeat is protected by law, does this mean that cutting the life support of brain-dead vegetables will become murder too?

[SpeakupNation]

10:39 AM on 03/08/2012

Oh they are ARE going there too. Look at the awful Terry Schiavo congressional intervention....

[Shadow Diver]

08:31 AM on 03/08/2012

They just don't get it. They are not against education as much as they cannot be educated.

[bobnsue6063]

08:21 AM on 03/08/2012

Do you think victims of rape and girls raped by fathers, brothers and uncles should have to go through this too? They will be required. Shame on you! I doubt the insurance companies like this either. It is a very expensive test. This has gone too far.

[SylvreWolfe]

12:06 PM on 03/08/2012

In the state of Oklahoma, insurance to cover such procedures have to be carried as a separate, and more expensive premium, rider to the average insurance policy. For some reason, Viagra and male impotency treatments get covered under regular insurance.

[coolelegans]

08:15 AM on 03/08/2012

Im prochoice, but as long as they aren't forcing the women to listen to the heartbeat, and they are only giving her a choice it shouldn't be as big of a deal.

Still, obviously this has no medical significance.

[SpeakupNation]

10:41 AM on 03/08/2012

They ARE intervening in the patient / doctor relationship by REQUIRING him to tell her this. And this is a incremental process - this is only half a foot in the door.

[tangelan]

08:12 AM on 03/08/2012

This bill will create 10 million jobs.

[Jordan Kratz]

08:05 AM on 03/08/2012

I wonder how many think we will just have a Religious War someday and right on our own Soil.
I personally am sick & tired of the Religious Types who are trying as hard as they can to force all of us to their Religious Beliefs.One day those types will be in for a real rude awakening.

[Riverman]

08:36 AM on 03/08/2012

Second that.