Oklahoma’s abortion law to be passed: Health Department posts personal abortion information online
By: Jennifer Laurin
Former Democratic state Rep has filed a lawsuit to try to block a new law, HB 1595. HB1595 is a law that would require women seeking abortions to provide doctors with answers to a 37-item questionnaire to be filled out by abortion providers before each procedure.
The first eight questions of the questionnaire include:
1. Date of abortion
2. County in which abortion performed
3. Age of mother
4. Marital status of mother (married, divorced, separated, widowed, or never married)
5. Race of mother
6. Years of education of mother (specify highest year completed)
7. State or foreign country of residence of mother
8. Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother
…and the list goes on for 29 more questions
The questionnaire requires doctors to pass the information on to the Oklahoma Health Department, which will post it on a public website.
Yes. Posted online. The red flag for many is within the first eight questions a woman’s identity could be determined in the smaller towns of Oklahoma.
Although the republican majority is saying that intimidation isn’t the purpose because, the questionnaire does not include the woman’s name or any information specifically identifying the patient. Even though it does ask for them to reveal age, race, level of education, marital status, their relationship with the father, education levels, the reason for the abortion and the county in which the abortion was performed.
Supporters of HB 1595 say, surveys will provide valuable information into understanding why women seek abortions. Women need to be provided with as much knowledge as possible before making an irrevocable decision.
Another section of the same law requires doctors to provide detailed information about complications that arise as a result of the procedure. Republican state Rep. Dan Sullivan, who helped draft the questionnaire bill, said, lawmakers are simply seeking as much information as possible to help them find ways to reduce the number of abortions in Oklahoma. “These are tragic situations for people, and we’re not trying to compound anyone’s emotional state,” said Sullivan.
Sullivan went on to say, the identities of the women who filled out the questionnaires would be kept private. Privacy is supposedly insured because the forms don’t ask for personally identifiable information and the Health Department has been directed to ensure personal information does not make it onto the web site. Shaming women through public admission of committing abortions is not the intent of this law.
Most states have abortion reporting requirements, but they are not as broad and detailed as Oklahoma’s. One of the two new laws which was overturned would require women seeking abortions to undergo an ultrasound and to have a doctor talk them through what they’re seeing. The law would require a doctor to use a vaginal transducer in the earliest stages of pregnancy because that provides the clearest image when the fetus is small.
Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi require ultrasounds in all abortion cases, and Arizona and Florida require them after the first trimester. Tony Lauinger, chairman of the anti-abortion group, Oklahomans for Life, said that the ultrasound law helps ensure that women are fully aware of how developed their fetus is.
But anti-abortion supporter, Anita Fream, the head of Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma said, “Even if you don’t look at the picture, you have to listen to the description.” She then stated, “It almost reaches the stage of seeming cruel to me.”
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President Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Courtesy of Routers.com By Matt Spetalnick and Wojciech Moskwa
WASHINGTON/OSLO (Reuters) - Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision that honored the first-year U.S. president more for promise than achievement and drew both praise and skepticism around the world.
The bestowal of one of the world’s top accolades on a president less than nine months in office, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.
Obama expressed surprise at winning the award, saying he felt humbled and unworthy of being counted in the company of the “transformative figures” of history who had won it.
US President Barack Obama passes by a battered United Nations flag that flew over the bombed Canal Hotel in Iraq at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in this September 23, 2009 file photo. (Photo: Reuters)
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” citing his fledgling push for nuclear disarmament and his outreach to the Muslim world.
Obama has been widely credited with improving America’s global image after the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, who alienated both friends and foes with go-it-alone policies like the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
But critics called the Nobel committee’s decision premature, given that Obama so far has made little tangible headway as he grapples with challenges ranging from the war in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea.
Obama, who got the news of the prize in a pre-dawn call from his press secretary, now also has the burden of living up to its expectations.
LITANY OF UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS:
The first African-American to hold his country’s highest office, Obama, 48, has struggled with a litany of foreign policy problems bequeathed to him by Bush, while taking a more multilateral approach than his predecessor.
Obama acknowledged while accepting an award predicated on the pursuit of peace, he was commander-in-chief of a country in two wars. “We have to confront the world as we know it,” he said.
He received the honor the same day he was convening his war council to weigh whether to send thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to turn the tide against a resurgent Taliban.
Despite troubles at home including a battered economy and fierce healthcare debate that have eroded his once-lofty approval ratings, the Democratic U.S. president is still widely seen around the world as an inspirational figure.
“Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the Nobel committee said in its citation.
But some analysts saw the award as a final slap in the face for Bush from the European establishment, which had resented what they saw as arrogance and recklessness in world affairs.
Obama will travel to Oslo to receive the prize on December 10, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.
While the award won praise from such statesmen as Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev, both Nobel laureates, it was also attacked in some quarters as hasty and undeserved.
Afghanistan’s Taliban mocked the award.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, speaking to Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location, said it was absurd to give a peace award to a man who had sent 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, and Obama “should have won the ‘Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians.’”
Obama is considering a request from his top commander in Afghanistan to send him at least 40,000 more troops.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and opposes a peace treaty with Israel, said the award was premature at best.
EMBARRASSING “JOKE”
Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland rejected suggestions from journalists that Obama was getting the prize too early, saying it recognized what he had already done over the past year.
“We hope this can contribute a little bit to enhance what he is trying to do,” he told a news conference.
Obama is the fourth U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after Jimmy Carter won in 2002, Woodrow Wilson picked it up in 1919 and Theodore Roosevelt was chosen for the 1906 prize.
Issam al-Khazraji, a day laborer in Baghdad, said of Obama: “He doesn’t deserve this prize. All these problems — Iraq, Afghanistan — have not been solved … man of ‘change’ hasn’t changed anything yet.”
Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party in Pakistan, called the award an embarrassing “joke.”
But the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, welcomed it and expressed hope that Obama “will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East.”
While many Americans voiced pride, some were puzzled.
“It would be wonderful if I could think why he won,” said Claire Sprague, 82, a retired English professor as she walked her dog in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. “They wanted to give him an honor I guess, but I can’t think what for.”
The committee said it attached “special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons,” saying he had “created a new climate in international politics.”
On other pressing issues, Obama is still searching for breakthroughs on Iran‘s disputed nuclear program and on stalled Middle East peacemaking.
Israel’s foreign minister said on Thursday there was no chance of a peace deal for many years.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been tipped as a favorite for the prize, told Reuters that Obama was a deserving candidate and an “extraordinary example.”
The prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.4 million).
(Additional reporting by Oslo newsroom, Kamran Haider in Pakistan, Mohammed Assadi, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Mark Denge in Nairobi, Jason Webb in Spain; Writing by Alistair Bell, Editing by Frances Kerry and Eric Beech)
Ok, Obama, step it up. I didn’t vote for you but I will support you if you actually make the “changes” that you’re striving for. We the people are here and you know what we want. Let’s get it done. Peace in the Middle East, The USA’s economy, Health care… You know what you need to do. Like Nike says, “Just do it.”
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