>The Oklahoma State Legislature has overturned Governor Henry’s veto of an “omnibus” bill containing abortion regulations. (The veto is explained at the United Kingdom site of Medical News Today. Besides gives the best definition of human embryo that I’ve seen in legislation:
“Human embryo” means a human organism that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.
Pro-abortion groups are concerned that the bill requires the facility doctor to perform an ultrasound before every abortion, that the girl or woman be allowed to see it, and that the results be explained to her. Not only is there a requirement to post a notice in the facility informing the women and girls that it is “against the law for anyone, regardless of his or her relationship to you, to force you to have an abortion” and the abortionist evidently must actually speak the words out loud before each abortion!
Called the “Freedom of Conscience Act,” (The text is here, in a Word document) the bill offers protection to any medical professional who refuses to act in a way that goes against his or her conscience.
The best news article that I’ve found is here, at the “Daily Women’s Health Policy Report” of the National Partnership for Women and Families, a group I’d never heard of before. It appears that the main focus has been legislation to protect women in the workplace.
Robert Cole, an Oklahoma native, writing for Associated Content, has explained the bill in this article. Here’s an article from The Feminist Majority, with good links.
Ironically, Democratic Presidential Candidate, Barack Obama, used the objection to abortion by the Senator from Oklahoma, Senator and Obstetrician Tom Coburn, to justify his relationship with the Weatherman bomb-building conspirator and now-college professor, William Ayers. (Ayers is the man who was quoted in the New York Times on September 11, 2001 as regretting that he did not do enough bombing and fighting the US government in the early ’70’s.)
LifeEthics 
>Now people can argue about the definition of 'organism' :> What about, say, an embryo missing some vital gene needed to develop? I can see those being made for research purposes. And is it 'derived' from human cells if they provide only parts, and animal cells the rest? How big a part? A nucleus? A chromosome? A gene?It's a better definition than most used for legal purposes, certinly. But there is still enough wriggle-room for some fun.
Posted by Suricou Raven | April 24, 2008, 11:08 pm