OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A lawsuit that challenges an Oklahoma law on medical abortion is scheduled to be argued in an Oklahoma County courtroom.
A hearing is scheduled Monday in the lawsuit filed by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of Reproductive Services, a nonprofit reproductive health care facility in Tulsa, and the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice.
The law, signed by Gov. Mary Fallin last year, prohibits off-label uses of abortion-inducing drugs by requiring doctors to administer them only in accordance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration protocols.
The lawsuit alleges the law places unconstitutional restrictions on non-surgical abortion in the earliest weeks of pregnancy.
Abortion rights advocates claim that the law would force physicians to treat women seeking medication abortion with methods that are less safe, less effective and more expensive.
The head of a pro-life group praised Ms. Fallin’s decision to sign the medication abortion law, which was sponsored by State Rep. Randy Grau.
“The Food and Drug Administration set guidelines for the use of RU-486, and from the beginning the abortion industry has shown little or no regard for these guidelines, because they are more interested in abortion than in women’s health,” said Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life.
“Obviously, we do not want any babies killed, whether by RU-486, which starves them, or by surgical forceps that dismember them. But Gov. Fallin and the state legislature are to be commended for trying to make this deadly procedure a little less dangerous for women,” he said.
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