The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of a state supreme court ruling that denies the voters of Oklahoma their right to decide on a pro-life personhood initiative in that state. The proposed amendment would have defined “person” as “any human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being to natural death.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt had approved the ballot title and summary, and Personhood Oklahoma was in the process of gathering the needed signatures to place the issue before the voters, when the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights and other pro-abortion groups filed a lawsuit to keep the initiative from going before the state's voters. Within ten days the Oklahoma Supreme Court followed up, ruling that the initiative violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Nancy Northrup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, exulted Monday over the High Court's refusal to consider the lower court's ruling, claiming it as “yet another resounding message to the opponents of reproductive freedom that such extremist assaults on our fundamental rights will not stand. Pure and simple, these tactics are an affront to our nation's Constitution and a bald-faced attempt to foreclose women's access to a full range of reproductive health care.”

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