Oklahoma’s Supreme Court last year temporarily blocked enforcement of two state laws curbing women’s access to abortion.
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Oklahoma’s track record of trying to restrict abortion took another hit Monday when an Oklahoma County judge threw out a law restricting medication abortions, saying it violated the state constitution.
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.
District Judge Patricia Parrish invalidated the law, which Gov. Mary Fallin signed previous year.
The law was passed in 2014, but had not gone into effect yet.
“The law tried to tell the doctors that they had to use it according to an old application, and old procedure that is no longer commonly used”, Martha Hardwick, attorney for the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice said.
The restrictions in the state will be lifted only after the Supreme Court reaches a decision over the state’s requirement for clinics to meet hospital-like surgical standards and for doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.
“The evidence clearly shows that the off-label usage is more unsafe and not as safe as surgical abortion”, Mansinghani said.
Among the drugs covered by the laws is mifepristone, originally known as RU-486.
Cooper said doctors are normally allowed to prescribe unapproved FDA drugs for use. 448)-a bill that would prohibit states like Wisconsin from imposing unconstitutional restrictions on reproductive health care providers that apply to no similar medical care, interfere with women’s personal decision making, and block access to safe and legal abortion services.
A District Judge has sided with an Oklahoma abortion rights group.
She said more than 2 million American women have taken the drugs together since the FDA approved them in 2000. The judge said those deaths were not proven to be a direct result of the off-label protocol, but it hadn’t been ruled out either.
It also was noted that 96 percent of medication abortions follow off-label protocol.
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“The conservative folks in this state will do whatever they can to put roadblocks in front of women to be able to make judgments and decisions about their own healthcare”, Hardwick said.
