Tulsa March for Life, today, 11:30 a.m.

Tulsa's second annual March for Life and rally will be held today, January 22, 2011, in downtown Tulsa, to mark the 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decisions that overturned abortion prohibitions in every state.

The march will begin at 8th and Boulder at 11:30 and will proceed 6 blocks to Centennial Green on 6th Street between Main and Boston, where the rally will be held. Last year's march, the first held here, drew more than 2000 people.

This week, Americans United for Life issued its annual analysis of state laws and their effectiveness in protecting the sanctity of human life. This year Oklahoma is number one:

Oklahoma tops the Life List for the first time. In 2006 (the first year of AUL's ranking), Oklahoma was ranked at #15. Over the past few years, the state has aggressively pursued and implemented a comprehensive agenda of life-affirming initiatives. Among the measures recently enacted in Oklahoma are an ultrasound requirement, limits on the provision of RU-486, coerced abortion prevention, and protections for health care freedom of conscience. Moreover, in 2009, Oklahoma became the first state to enact AUL's innovative Pregnant Woman's Protection Act, permitting pregnant women to use force to protect their unborn children from criminal assaults.

There is still work to be done in Oklahoma. In last year's report, AUL identified bioethics as an area where our laws are still insufficient.

There is even more work to be done elsewhere. From the grand jury indictment of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.

The report shows that state authorities responsible for enforcing basic medical standards and state laws regulating abortion turned a blind eye to Gosnell's practice:

It is not our job to say who should be fired or demoted. We believe, however, that anyone responsible for permitting Gosnell to operate as he did should face strong disciplinary action up to and including termination. This includes not only the people who failed to do the inspecting, the prosecuting, and the protecting, but also those at the top who obviously tolerated, or even encouraged, the inaction. The Department of State literally licensed Gosnell's criminally dangerous behavior. DOH gave its stamp of approval to his facility. These agencies do not deserve the public's trust. The fate of Karnamaya Mongar and countless babies with severed spinal cords is proof that people at those departments were not doing their jobs. Those charged with protecting the public must do better.

Elsewhere in the grand jury report:

We discovered that Pennsylvania's Department of Health has deliberately chosen not to enforce laws that should afford patients at abortion clinics the same safeguards and assurances of quality health care as patients of other medical service providers. Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety.

The State Legislature has charged the Department of Health (DOH) with responsibility for writing and enforcing regulations to protect health and safety in abortion clinics as well as in hospitals and other health care facilities. Yet a significant difference exists between how DOH monitors abortion clinics and how it monitors facilities where other medical procedures are performed.

Indeed, the department has shown an utter disregard both for the safety of women who seek treatment at abortion clinics and for the health of fetuses after they have become viable. State health officials have also shown a disregard for the laws the department is supposed to enforce. Most appalling of all, the Department of Health's neglect of abortion patients' safety and of Pennsylvania laws is clearly not inadvertent: It is by design. ...

State health officials knew that Gosnell and his clinic were offering unacceptable medical care to women and girls, yet DOH failed to take any action to stop the atrocities documented by this Grand Jury. These officials were far more protective of themselves when they testified before the Grand Jury. Even DOH lawyers, including the chief counsel, brought private attorneys with them - presumably at government expense.

In her column on the story, Michelle Malkin calls attention to the grand jury's statement about the role played by a pro-abortion RINO governor in allowing these horrors to continue in Philadelphia:

But the grand jury itself pointed out that loosened oversight of abortion clinics enacted under pro-choice former GOP governor Tom Ridge enabled Gosnell's criminal enterprise - and led to the heartless execution of hundreds of babies. Mass murder got a pass in the name of expanding "access" and appeasing abortion lobbyists. As the report made clear: "With the change of administration from [pro-life Democrat] Governor Casey to Governor Ridge," government health officials "concluded that inspections would be 'putting a barrier up to women' seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay."

That Pennsylvania has laws in place which could indict Gosnell for such practices is a sign of growing respect in our country for the sanctity of human life. That some Pennsylvania officials deliberately refused to enforce those laws, and that the mainstream media have shown little interest in this story of public officials enabling mass murder, shows that the culture of death is still deeply entrenched in America's ruling class.