EDMOND — Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District challenger Tom Guild, D-Edmond, said the Republican platform threatens birth control and would put in vitro fertilization clinics out of business.

The Republican platform calls to “assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution.”

“There is a pretty clear statement there that we believe that is a life,” said Congressman James Lankford, R-Edmond.

Democrats are saying all Republicans hate all women and don’t want any women to have any reproductive choice, which is not true, Lankford said.

“That’s a line they’re trying to get us back to the divide and conquer strategy the Democrats have, to divide Americans and try to find some divisive issue to be able to define us,” Lankford said. “That is not true. I don’t have an issue with contraceptives. There haven’t been any bills on contraceptives.”

Lankford’s bid for re-election in the Nov. 6 election is also opposed by two Independent candidates, Pat Martin of Jones and Norman resident Robert T. Murphy. Martin said the issue should be decided at a local level. Legislation ending a woman’s right for an abortion would result in the government monitoring every woman from the start of menarche until menopause, Murphy said.

Language in the Republican platform would outlaw the “morning after pill” and other types of birth control, Guild said.

The “morning after pill” is emergency contraception commonly used soon after a woman believes her egg has been fertilized, according to Planned Parenthood.

“Once a sperm and egg come together; once that has full constitutional protection, and if you do something to disrupt that ‘person,’ that’s homicide,” Guild said in describing the Life at Conception Act, co-sponsored by Lankford in 2011.

However, language in H.R. 374 states “nothing shall be construed to require the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child.”

Lankford was one of 119 co-sponsors of the H.R. 374. The bill was introduced in Jan. 2011 but was never referred by committee.

H.R. 374 is identical to the Republican agenda, Guild said, by stating,  “The terms ‘human person’ and ‘human being’ include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”

The Republican platform threatens in vitro fertilization clinics in that many fertilized eggs that are frozen do not survive, Guild said. The final draft of the federal “personhood bill” did not include in vitro fertilization, Lankford said.

“If he’s saying that, he’s spinning a bill that doesn’t even exist anymore,” Lankford said. “I think he’s creating an issue. Our bills don’t deal with that.”

Republican presidential nominee, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, is campaigning against abortion except in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother.

Women should have the right to make reproductive health decisions for themselves, said Kendal Wylie, a senior at the University of Central Oklahoma with a major in sociology. Outlawing a woman’s right to end a pregnancy with “personhood” language attached to a constitutional amendment would eliminate a couple’s right to chose in vitro fertilization, said Wylie, a Democrat.

“It makes me worried that I’ll be regulated in my decisions,” said Wylie, while adding that she does not believe a fetus is yet a human being.

Candidates sometimes discount the emotional and financial burden that an unplanned pregnancy can place on a woman, she said.

“It makes me frightened because women have done an amazing job for women’s rights over the last 60 years of making sure women can have options for pregnancy and parenting,” Wylie said.

She fears that women would be forced to return to the dangerous days of botched abortions in which many women died of infection without a physician’s care.

“There have been thousands of cases of women doing at-home abortions that led to other complications,” Wylie said. “That seems backwards, to me, to protect the life of a fetus and not protect the life of a living human being.”

Human beings are guaranteed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, said Dionna Glass, a member of the Oklahoma Baptist Collegiate Ministry at UCO. Glass is a senior student majoring in psychology.

“I believe the fetus is entitled to those rights as well,” Glass said. “When the fetus is young, I believe that it is a living thing.”

Glass said a fetus already has a heartbeat at 10 weeks of age, indicating that it has DNA to make it human. Cellular reproduction makes it living as it reacts to different stimuli, she said.

“The Bible speaks over and over about not murdering and how that is a sin,” Glass said. She quoted Psalms 139, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. You watched me as I was being formed…”

Glass said it’s weird when women say that as women, they can do whatever they want with their bodies. Prostitution is illegal, she said.

“I think 98 percent of abortions are for social reasons,” Glass said. “I’ve heard little micro numbers for how many of it accounts for rape. So I don’t know why people are focusing on the 1 percent and not the 99 percent of people doing it for convenience.”

Glass said she believes abortion is murder and is comparable to a mother not feeding her child.



TO LEARN MORE about fetal development, go to pregnancy.org.



jcoburn@edmondsun.com | 341-2121