Lawmakers wrestle with pro-life bills
Valeska Littlefield was frightened and confused years ago when at age 18, she found out she was pregnant out of wedlock.
Her family gave her an ultimatum - leave the family forever or get an abortion. She went to an abortion clinic where workers told her the unborn baby was “a cancer inside her” and then showed her a photo of her “fetus” that was actually a photo of a placenta.
“I thought that I had a cancer inside of me that was going to kill me,” said Littlefield. “I had no idea there were other options.”
She had the abortion, much to her later regret.
“I would have run out of there,” Littlefield said had she known what an abortion really was and that her unborn child was a person. “I sacrificed my child’s life so that my family would accept me.”
Two years later, Littlefield’s 18-year-old sister found herself in the same predicament. She chose life for her son, who is a 20-year-old student at Oklahoma State University in 2010.
Littlefield has pledged herself to the fight against abortion.
She is the director of Hope Pregnancy Center in Tulsa and she was the keynote speaker Feb. 25 at the 2010 Legislator’s Luncheon in the State Capitol sponsored by the Oklahoma Pro-Life Media Coalition. The Tulsa Beacon is a member of the coalition.
“I am the face of abortion on this issue,” Littlefield told the collection of state representatives and senators plus members of the Christian media.
Littlefield said her family’s concern for what others thought about them drove her to have an abortion. She cited a statistic based on interviews with women who have had abortions and 75 percent said their decision to kill their unborn baby was based on concern about what others thought.
“We need to protect that unborn life,” Littlefield said. “When given enough information, 90 percent of those mothers will choose life when they know what they are fighting for.”
Mike Jestes, executive director of the Oklahoma Family Policy Council (connected to Focus on the Family), is one of the organizers of the annual event.
Tony Lauinger, state director of Oklahomans for Life, spoke about pending legislation to curb abortion in Oklahoma.
Because of a ruling by an Oklahoma City judge, sponsors of pro-life laws passed in 2009 are having to run the same bills through the Legislature in 2010. The judge ruled that even though all of the laws deal with abortion, they must be passed one by one.
Lauinger profiled the following bills:
• Senate Bill 1890- (Sen. Todd Lamb and Rep. Dan Sullivan) would prohibit abortions done for the purpose of sex selection.
• House Bill 3284 (Rep. Pam Peterson and Sen. Clark Jolley) mandates the reporting of abortions performed in the state, the reasons for the abortions and any medical complications that result.
• House Bill 3110 (Rep. Peterson) and Senate Bill 1981 (Sen. Lamb) protects health care professionals’ jobs if they refuse to take part in an abortion.
• Senate Bill 1902 (Sen. Lamb) and House Bill 3290 (Rep. Skye McNiel) regulates the use of RU-486 - the abortion pill that kills an unborn child who is about two months old.
• House Bill 2780 (Rep. Lisa Billy and Sen. Anthony Sykes) gives women an ultrasound of her baby to view before undergoing an abortion.
• House Bill 3075 (Rep. Rebecca Hamilton and Sen. Ron Justice) ensures that a mother’s consent to an abortion is voluntary and safeguards against coerced abortions.
• House Bill 2656 (Rep. Dan Sullivan and Sen. Brian Crain) disallowed wrongful-life lawsuits against doctors that claim that a disabled baby would have been better off aborted.