Judge Blocks Oklahoma Law Restricting Medication Abortion
Center for Reproductive Rights Lawsuit Says Law Sacrifices Women’s Health to Ideological Agenda
(PRESS RELEASE) The judge
overseeing a lawsuit brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights to overturn
a law severely restricting the use of medications to terminate pregnancies has
granted a temporary injunction blocking the law’s enforcement.
Today’s decision, handed down by Oklahoma County District Judge Daniel Owens, means
that women seeking pregnancy terminations in Oklahoma will continue to have
access to a medical protocol based on scientific evidence, sound medical
judgment, and advances in medicine, and to medication as a non—surgical
treatment option for some women with ectopic pregnancy.
The Center for Reproductive Rights filed
the lawsuit on October 5 on behalf of the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive
Justice, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the availability of
the full range of reproductive healthcare services to women throughout the state,
and Nova Health Systems (d/b/a Reproductive Services), a non-profit
reproductive healthcare facility located in Tulsa
“We are
extremely pleased that women in Oklahoma will continue to have access to
treatment options for pregnancy terminations that have been widely recognized
as safe and effective by medical experts and organizations around the world,”
said Michelle Movahed, staff attorney for the Center. “Anti-choice lawmakers in
Oklahoma have made it clear that they’re content to sacrifice women’s health,
well-being, and constitutional rights in their relentless efforts to choke off
access to the full range of reproductive health services. We will continue to fight to protect
women’s access to health care from these assaults, and to get this law overturned
once and for all.”
The lawsuit asserts the law not only jeopardizes women’s health,
but also undermines their ability to exercise the full range of their
constitutionally protected reproductive rights. By prohibiting uses of
medications that are supported by abundant scientific evidence and the
considered opinions of the World Health Organization and other medical
organizations and experts worldwide, the suit argues, the law singles out women
seeking abortion and treatment for ectopic pregnancy and their doctors for
arbitrary restrictions that jeopardize their health in service of purely
ideological aims.
