[JURIST] Oklahoma state court judge Daniel Owens ruled Friday that a state law, making it illegal for a doctor to perform an abortion based on the gender of a fetus and requiring numerous reporting requirements, violates the Oklahoma Constitution. Owens found that the law, called the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act, violated the constitutional requirement that a law cover only a single subject. Provisions of the law banned doctors from performing an abortion based on a women’s desire for a baby of a specific sex, required doctors to ask a series of more than 35 questions inquiring into a woman’s relationships and reasons for wanting an abortion, and set up a website that would have displayed demographics based on the information gathered. The law allowed for criminal charges against doctors who failed to report the information. Oklahoma legislators have said they will work around the ruling by passing separate bills to cover each subject of the invalidated law.
The law was challenged last year by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of two Oklahoma residents. In August a different state law requiring women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound within an hour of the procedure was found to be unconstitutional. That legislation was declared to be invalid based on the same single subject requirement. Provisions of that law also included requirements for abortion clinic signs, the administration of an early-term abortion pill, and rules on lawsuits relating to abortions. That ruling has been appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court.