Love the part where its a crime against unborn to waste sperm. Sorry guys no more masturbation in Oklahoma
The first bill of the session passed by the Oklahoma Senate was an anti-abortion statement that life begins at the moment of conception, approved by senators Wednesday after two hours of debate.
The practical effect of the bill is open to question. Its author, Sen. Brian Crain, R-Tulsa, said it's merely a statement that Oklahoma is “pro-life.” He labeled as fear mongering contentions by opponents that it could lead to restrictions on abortions, birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research.
The Personhood Act, Senate Bill 1433, received international attention in the wake of a proposed amendment from Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Holdenville. The amendment said it was an act against unborn children for men to waste sperm. “A lot of people thought that I was being facetious with my amendment in committee, and it was humorous and it has gotten international response,” Johnson said to her fellow senators.
“But I was serious as a heart attack. It wasn't until I used the biological and scientific references to those functions that somebody heard it. Maybe nobody in this chamber gets it but somebody heard that all we're asking for is for this conversation to include both individuals that are necessary to bring life about.”
Johnson, whose amendment was tabled, said she is sick of legislation that pries into the private lives of women with no mention of the men who are co-actors in the process of conception.
The bill passed 34-8 with several Democrats voting in favor.
Crain defended the bill he authored as a necessary step toward protecting Oklahoma's most vulnerable people, unborn children.
“The unborn have no voice of their own. We must be the voice of the unborn,” Crain said. “It will take us to the very limit of what the United States Supreme Court has deemed to be constitutional.”
He said the bill was a lobbyist request from the group Oklahomans for Life, but he would not name people who had sought the bill.
Oklahoma already has some of the strictest regulations on the books when it comes to abortions. Only three clinics in the state perform abortions, and the abortion rate in Oklahoma is lower than the national average, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 2008, about 10 out of every 1,000 women had an abortion in Oklahoma, lower than the national average of almost 20 abortions per 1,000 women.
“What would I do in the situation where one of my daughters found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy?” Crain said. “I would hope that my children would say, ‘Dad, I choose life. ... I would like to raise this child or I can't raise this child but I would like to bring this child into the world and then that child could be adopted.'”
Sen. Jim Wilson, D-Tahlequah, made a plea for the men of the Senate not to take that choice away from women.
“We say we're pro-life out here, but we don't do anything to limit pregnancies,” Wilson said. “We could do medically accurate sex education, but we choose not to do that. We could make birth control more available, but we choose not to do that.”
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Crain's bill would not create a cause of action against a woman for indirectly harming her unborn child by failing to properly care for herself or failing to follow a program of prenatal care.
Critics say the measure would affect birth control, give inheritance rights to the unborn and reduce the availability of in-vitro fertilization, among other things. Crain disagreed.
He said it would not make women subject to homicide or manslaughter charges for seeking an abortion because abortion is allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
But Crain said the measure announces that Oklahoma is a pro-life state.
Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, said that while it takes two people to create life, Crain's measure focuses only on half of that equation.
Dr. Eli Reshef, medical director at the Bennett Fertility Institute, which is affiliated with Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, said the bill would reduce the number of providers for in-vitro fertilization.
If a lab technician dropped a dish containing fertilized human eggs, it would be considered a crime, Reshef said.
"Embryos, including those frozen in storage, are now persons," Reshef said.
"Do they have inheritance rights because they are a person now?
"Do they have to be counted in the Census? I know this might sound like stretching, but this is how vague a law like this is."
link"There are very few problems that cannot be solved by the suitable application of photon torpedoes
