While much of the nation was focused on the Alabama State Supreme Court’s controversial decision regarding in vitro fertilization last month, Oklahoma lawmakers were engaged in an equally troubling matter, just as insidious and ominously Orwellian: a bill that would allow the state to create a database of every person who has an abortion in the state.

Under the bill’s original language, H.B. 3216, any physician who performed a “pre-viability separation procedure” (translation: abortion) had to report it to the Oklahoma State Department of Health along with the date, gestational age, and reason for the abortion.

Further, the bill would have required the department “to establish a confidential system” to identify women who had a procedure — not by name, but by assigning each woman a “unique patient identifier.” Under the bill, a woman’s identity could be released to authorities via a court order if legal action is deemed necessary. By whom is not clear. The abortion police, perhaps.

The bill also prohibited the distribution of “any medicine, drug, or any
other substance prescribed or dispensed with the intent of inducing
an abortion.” Physicians who knowingly violated this section of the bill could have their license suspended or revoked for a year and could be sued by the state for malpractice.

A companion bill, H.B. 3013, would make delivering or possessing abortion-inducing drugs a felony, with penalties of up to $100,000 in fines or 10 years in prison.

Oklahoma bans abortion except to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. It is one of several states with laws stipulating that life begins at conception, or in some cases, fertilization.

But there’s good news: Blowback has resulted in changes to the bill since being introduced in February. Its author, state representative Kevin West, pulled the section allowing for a statewide database, as well as another section of the bill banning contraceptives like IUDs and Plan B, the so-called morning after pill. West also added an amendment to the bill excluding IVF from any potential ban.

But the original language, and the idea that some elected officials supported the language, makes you wonder how they thought such draconian measures were OK and would pass legal muster. It bolted out of committee on a 5-1 vote. A vote on the Oklahoma House floor was scheduled for this month followed by one in the Senate, but the bill’s revisions may delay those plans.

West says he wrote the bill with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm that was involved in the effort to overturn Roe v. Wade. He reportedly argued in committee that the idea was to track abortions the same way the state tracks births and deaths.

I doubt that was on the minds of anyone at ADF, but if that’s the kind of tracking you wanna do, Mr. West, why not make those women wear scarlet letters?

Let us expand your bill and create a database for everyone who has had a heart attack. We could make them wear tracking software to monitor their food and beverage purchases, maybe with a threshold on salt or caloric intake. Violate the threshold and you’re denied Medicare or Medicaid.

Perhaps we can demand data from states where it’s still legal to obtain an abortion or abortifacient.

How about this: A motorist with more than three traffic violations and the state installs a tracking device — we could call it a “unique vehicle identifier” — that monitors your speed, location, stops, and starts. We could cross-reference this will traffic light sequencing data and submit all traffic offenses to the Big Brother, regardless of future police encounters.

Let’s make all people the property of the state.

For what it’s worth — just as a sidebar here — Congress has........

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