By Andrew W. Griffin

Red Dirt Report, editor

Posted: February 17, 2012

reddirtreporter@gmail.com

For our Friday round-up, we have a few stories we are monitoring here at Red Dirt Report …

This over-the-top “Personhood Act,” put forth by Sen. Brian Crain (R-Tulsa), has been increasingly criticized, even as the Senate supports it, the House is expected to support it and Gov. Mary Fallin is expected to sign it into law.

Oklahoma columnist L.L. Woodard said this week the "Personhood Act" "has the potential to be used against in-vitro fertilization ..." and that "excess embryos are frozen and discarded" in the process. But with this act, that "could be deemed illegal activity."

Dr. Dana Stone, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Oklahoma City, however, writes in the Oklahoma Gazette this week, in a piece headlined “Perils of ‘personhood,’” complex medical decisions made by women, their families, their physicians and their clergy should not be made by state government and the courts.

As Stone writes: “The Personhood Act is intended to prevent abortion, but it goes too far and will have too many unforeseen consequences.”

In other news over at the State Capitol, a bill to require a prescription to buy cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine was defeated. And the bill to pull funding for OETA was pulled this week, it being withdrawn by State Rep. Leslie Osborn (R-Mustang). Turns out Osborn didn't have the votes to further the bill.

The University of Oklahoma will posthumously honor Oklahoma City native and Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Shadid, 43,  who died in Syria of an asthma attack while covering Syria for The New York Times. It will be for Shadid's distinction as one of OU's "most outstanding former students." Oklahoma City Councilman Ed Shadid is on his way to Lebanon to retrieve his relative's body to return to the U.S., according to KTOK AM 1000.

And while The Oklahoman op/ed page is parroting the neocon warmonger line of thinking as evidenced by their offensive Iran-attack-on-Israel editorial cartoon today, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that “Iran is enriching uranium in a peaceful nuclear program but that Tehran has not decided to develop an atomic bomb.”

And something close to home, at least here at Red Dirt Report, is the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity's "Protect Your Voice" petition drive "to ensure that citizen journalists and bloggers enjoy the same legal protections that cover traditional news media." Tulsa's BatesLine blog has more.

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