This week’s focus on the abortion-related ballot measures in Colorado and North Dakota (where “personhood” initiatives were emphatically defeated), and Tennessee (where a majority of voters weakened protection of reproductive rights) has obscured a notable Election Day development in a fourth state: Oklahoma.
On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued a pair of orders blocking enforcement of two egregious new laws designed to make it more difficult than it already is for women to obtain safe and legal abortions in that state.
One of them requires clinics providing abortions to have a physician with admitting privileges at a local hospital to be present during abortion procedures.
Mandating a formal hospital affiliation is a popular tactic deployed by opponents of abortion rights to close abortion clinics. But as leading medical groups attest, it is unnecessary for insuring the proper emergency treatment of women who experience complications, which are exceedingly rare. Admitting privileges are regularly denied for reasons having nothing to do with a physician’s professional competence, including local hostility to abortion rights or a hospital’s religious sponsorship.
The Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging Oklahoma’s admitting privileges rule on behalf of Dr. Larry Burns, who performs more than 40 percent of all abortions in Oklahoma and has been unable to obtain admitting privileges at a hospital near his clinic – one of just three remaining abortion facilities in the state.
The other blocked provision would force women seeking an early medication abortion to use an outdated protocol approved by the Food and Drug Administration 14 years ago, which is less safe and more expensive than the method most doctors use today. Under current standard practice, abortion-inducting drugs are prescribed “off label” at different doses and for use up to two weeks later than the old regimen permits, allowing more women who have decided to end a pregnancy to avoid a surgical procedure.
The state Supreme Court orders are silent on the validity of the two restrictions. But at least they will avoid hard-to-reverse clinic closures, as well as undue interference with women’s lives and sound medical practice, at least until the constitutionality of the provisions is “fully and finally litigated.” These days, that counts as a victory.