State Supreme Court Stops Anti-Abortion Petition

OKLAHOMA CITY — An initiative petition that would have made abortion illegal was stopped by the Oklahoma Supreme Court Tuesday.

The petition, filed on Jan. 27 by Thomas R. Hunter, sought to amend the Oklahoma Constitution, adding a new section that made abortion and some forms of contraception illegal.

Tuesday the state’s high court said it wasn’t free to impose its own view of the law because the U.S. Supreme Court had previously ruled on the issue. “This court is duty bound by the United States and the Oklahoma Constitution to follow the mandates of the United States Supreme Court on matters of federal constitutional law,” the state court said.

ACLU Oklahoma Executive Director Ryan Kiesel said the proposal would have limited a woman’s right to make reproductive decisions. “It’s abundantly clear that any measure that interferes with a woman’s reproductive rights, including the legal right to have access to abortion, is unconstitutional,” Kiesel said.

"Make no mistake about it, there remain serious threats to reproductive freedom in Oklahoma. There are those who are actively attempting to marginalize women and roll back the hard-earned progress we have made as a society. Today however, one of those efforts was defeated by over four decades of Supreme Court precedent that guarantee the fundamental right of women to make important medical decisions for themselves," Kiesel said.

Kiesel also said the court's ruling should not be viewed as "an example of the Oklahoma Supreme Court telling us what it thinks about reproductive rights.”

“This is the Oklahoma Supreme Court simply reaffirming the very basic principles of federalism and constitutional law,” he said.