OKLAHOMA CITY — A Norman abortion provider on Thursday asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court to toss out a 2014 law requiring him to obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.
Dr. Larry A. Burns is appealing a Feb. 18 finding by Oklahoma County District Judge Don Andrews that Senate Bill 1848 did not violate various provisions of law.
Burns is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based organization that has successfully challenged other Oklahoma abortion laws.
The law has been put on hold pending the outcome of the legal challenge.
“It is just one in a long series of comprehensive and progressively more onerous restrictions providers have been forced to challenge to continue providing health care and avert systematic legislative efforts to dismantle abortion access in the state,” the challenge states.
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Burns alleges the lower court made serious errors in constitutional law.
He says the law violated the state constitution because it contained more than one subject.
The doctor also contends the law is an impermissible special law targeting a certain class.
He also said it was an unconstitutional delegation of power to hospitals to determine who gets admitting privileges and therefore who can perform abortions.
“The Act is only one in a series of legislative enactments aimed at eliminating access to abortion in Oklahoma,” the petition’s summary of the case states. “If enforced, it will force the closure of Dr. Burns’ clinic, where he has provided safe abortion services for over 40 years, leaving only a single abortion provider in Oklahoma.”
An attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights said the law is restrictive.
“Oklahoma’s clinic shutdown law will harm women by depriving them of safe and legal options when they’ve made the decision to end a pregnancy,” said Ilene Jaroslaw, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We are confident the state’s highest court will see through the façade of this sham measure and ultimately find it unconstitutional.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a similar law in Texas. Oral arguments on that challenge were held earlier this month.
Will Gattenby, a spokesman for Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s office, said in a statement that the office successfully defended the law at the district court level and will continue to defend it.
