Okla. Supreme Court Strikes Down Personhood Initiative; LLDF Warns 'People Deprived of Rights'
The Life Legal Defense Foundation has raised concerns over the Oklahoma Supreme Court's recent decision to strike a ballot initiative seeking to amend the Oklahoma Constitution to define "person" as "any human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being to natural death."
"Putting an initiative on the ballot, collecting signatures and engaging in political discourse is really at the core of our rights to free speech as citizens. And in the states where individuals have been given the power of initiative and the power to collect signatures and put a measure before the people for a vote, we should protect that at all costs and not deprive them of that right to engage in the political process," Allison K. Aranda, Senior Staff Counsel of Life Legal Defense Foundation, said in an interview with The Christian Post.
The pro-life group has also notified the Oklahoma court that its ruling goes against the U.S. Supreme Court and needs to be reversed, a press release revealed.
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Personhood Oklahoma has been working on a signature drive for Initiative Petition 395 on the ballot, which is the Personhood amendment, but pro-abortion individuals filed a protest, claiming that the petition was unconstitutional.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court then agreed that the petition be stricken, noting that women had the right to obtain abortions without "undue burden" from state laws.
"It's hard to say why a court is doing any particular legal action. In this case it seems that they wanted to forgo a costly election, it's in their mind that the definition of 'personhood' that was put before them would have ultimately been deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court," said Aranda.
She suggested that it was a preemptive move by the Oklahoma Supreme Court to strike down the petition in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision. Aranda explained that several states have been debating Personhood in recent election cycles, but added that Oklahoma is currently the only one at an active legal status.
"We recently filed a friend of the court brief because we thought it was such an important issue, not necessarily the issue of Personhood itself, although that is valuable, but the fact that an entity like the Supreme Court to come and usurp the power of the people, to even put an initiative like this on the ballot, and allow the people of the state of Oklahoma to vote on it, it really jeopardizes the initiative process all over the Unites States," Aranda concluded.
