Oklahoma making a mandatory, public online registry of women who have had abortions

I think the public should know (especially our state) how many women are having abortions. Especially those that are under age 18 will be very telling as well as race, county and number of. It could be very educational information.

This is what medical journals are for, and I am sure this kind of statistical information is already available.

On the other hand, publishing individual details is a complete invasion of privacy; shame on Oklahoma for passing this.

Why should the public know?

And why just abortions? Why not kidney stone operations?

So we can determine if there's a unsually high number of abortions occuring in the state. Maybe we have a high % of underage girls having abortions. Why would that be? Are there rapes occuring that aren't being reported? Why shouldn't the public know about this anyway? The individual's name isn't revealed only generic data.

It's always amazing to me how conservatives hate Big Brother government "sticking its nose into our business", asking questions on census forms that violate our privacy, spending money on useless research...

Oh, except when it comes to abortion. Then the bigger and nosier the government, the better!

In a small town you don't need to reveal the name to reveal who the person is.

And the rest of your reasoning doesn't hold up to scrutiny either. Maybe there is a high percentage of underage abortions and maybe there aren't. Maybe they are caused by rapes and maybe they aren't. Maybe those rapes are reported, and maybe they aren't. All that is pure speculation.

I still don't see the complaint against revealing the generic data when the name isn't revealed.

That's because you're not reading.

Small towns don't have abortion doctors.

Question that needs answered: In what form will the data be made public? A macro level where we can see trends in the data, percentages and the like, or a micro level where we can see all the way down to the information for a specific procedure?

I don't think the public has any right to access the specific answers for someone's procedure, regardless of the fact that their name is protected. However, if the public only has access to a high level overview of the numbers, this isn't a big deal.

I'm fine with #1, 3 and 4.

So you're against making this information available publicly because a female in a small town which by your logic everyone should already know she's pregnant one day and no longer pregnant a week later is going to assume what? She either had an abortion, kept the baby or gave it up for adoption.

Nothing has changed, no privacy violated so what's the problem?

To what end?

Your assumptions about my logic are incorrect. People don't have to know whether or not a woman is pregnant.

Imagine this list of answers to the questions:

1) Date of abortion - 10/12/2009
2) County in which abortion is performed - Beckham County (population - 20,000)
3) Age of mother - 15
4) Marital status of mother - Single
5) Race of mother - Black
6) Years of education of mother - Sophomore in High School
7) State or foreign country of residence of mother - Oklahoma.
8) Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother - 1

Beckham County is 5% black. Of those people half are women. So that narrows down the list to 100 women. Of those 100, 10 are in high school, and 4 are sophomores. Tynisha didn't show up for class today. Guess she was pregnant. Not only that, but she had another pregnancy in the past.

No names revealed. Privacy completely violated.

I think I am recalling correctly (I could be wrong, been a while since I read the case) but I believe the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey upheld the right of states to take statistics like these as they are not an "undue burden" (whatever that is) on women's reproductive rights. However, it had to be anonymous statistics.

I am expressing no opinion as to the rightness or wrongness of Oklahoma's decisions, just that I think it is legal so long as names and such are not recorded and published, but the info itself, i.e, number of abortions in the state, can be published.

True, but just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right or that we agree with it!

is it actually asking for the name of the woman in the details?

No. However that doesn't mean that personally identifiable information won't be revealed (see my post above).

Again, if the only thing that is publiclly available is something like the following:

1224 Abortions

North Haven - 45
South Haven - 52
East Haven - 14
West Haven - 1000

Single - 600
Married - 624

HS - 821
College - 100

And so on ... then it's not an issue. The problem only becomes a problem if the details of any one procedure are searchable.

Let's assume that this is the case (by the way, that's NOT what the law says; the law says that individual abortion forms will be posted on a public website). Two problems with this:

1. What's the point of collecting these stats? There are already abortion statistics collected by various medical research organizations. Why is it the job of the state government to collect stats like these?

2. A list of questions like the one prescribed by the law is enough to intimidate a woman out of having an abortion. Now, I am all for reducing abortion rates, but not through intimidation.

Ugh. This isn't even about individuals; its about implicit societal surveillance, censoring what should be personal liberties, and controlling the female body as a whole. Its creating an entire second-class based on biology whose actions are reported 'to the public' as a form of public and self-surveillance. Up next, women will have to wear red armbands after having an abortion so that everyone can visually identify them. Its no biggie, though, I mean, she won't actually have to have her name on that armband, so its not like a stranger can hunt down your personal information. The band is just there for the general benefit of proper 'moral' public.

And what are you guys talking about 'she'. Your penises are just as much behind each pregnancy. When you're willing to start reporting every time you ejaculate, what you're looking at while you ejaculate (blonds or brunettes, young or old), if its with your formal partner or someone you're cheating with (because you would really report every time you slept around with someone other than your partner, just so 'the state' can identify if there is 'a problem' with too many supposedly monogamous men sleeping around), what your age, race, education level, and how many times a day/week you jerk off, how often you have had unprotected sex in the past, how often you followed up after having unprotected sex and actually paid attention to what is happening to the other woman you shot off into a month later, and if you have erectile dysfunction, than we'll talk.

Plus the education/race/age thing is just going to lead to so many paranoid interpretations by non-professionals (and, actually, even professionals) that its utterly ridiculous.

Isn't that what Craigslist is for?

Krem,

To point one, I assume the logic is that there is power behind this information, and that it could do good in some form or fashion. But it wouldn't surprise me if it is a political tactic aimed at digging up statistical proof that abortion is being used as a form of birth control by teenagers, young adults, and the poor.

To point two, there is paperwork associated with all procedures, and it's considered a norm. The procedure in question however has a much different social stigma associated with it, that stigma makes harmless questions such as these moonlight as something more. If someone told you that you had to answer the above to have your torn ACL repaired, you wouldn't bat an eye. The problem isn't the questions, it's the stigma that they are being distorted by.



I think abortion as a whole is a very, very tricky subject. I am of the belief that from when the sperm enters the egg, there is a very real and tangible life in existence within a woman. Let nature take it's course and that life will evolve to a point where it no longer relies on the woman. However as Dolce pointed out, a womans body is her own, and disallowing an abortion is forcing them to accept a drastic life event and bodily change possibly against their will for a minimum of 9 months. At what point do the rights of one human usurp the rights of another?

In society, we generally consider life to be sacrosanct, and the life of one usurps the rights of another, but what about when that same life depends and relies on the same person who wishes to terminate it? Picking some arbitrary date as a deadline is fair to neither side, but I see no clear answer in this debate.

My personal belief is not strong on this matter, meaning I generally stay out of the argument. However if asked, I'd say that there are multiple forms of birth control available to the public in addition to the ultimate form: abstinence. If you are having sex purely for pleasure, then you need to accept the consequences that come with it. In my mind, you lose your right to choose when that right causes the termination of another life.

Dolce is right, the male involved in this is just as responsible as the female, and that should be reflected in the event any law decides to outlaw abortion.

There is logic behind collecting all sorts of data. That doesn't make it the job of a state's government.


I would absolutely have a problem with a state government forcing me to reveal a set of data like that for any procedure. The fact that abortion carries a certain stigma, makes this law even more abhorring.



Really? What a unique point of view!


Well that's a nice philosophical argument related to abortion, but what does it have to do with Oklahoma's decision to collect data regarding abortion?