Oklahoma’s highest court ruled on Tuesday that two of the state’s new abortion restrictions are unconstitutional, ensuring that the anti-choice laws will not take effect.

A lower court in Oklahoma had already issued an injunction against the laws, and this ruling reaffirms that decision. According to Oklahoma’s Supreme Court justices, both pieces of legislation — one that would impose mandatory ultrasounds on women seeking abortions, and one that sought to ban off-label versions of abortion-inducing drugs like RU-486 — are in direct contradiction to women’s constitutional right to legal abortion services under Roe v. Wade:

“Because the United States Supreme Court has previously determined the dispositive issue presented in this manner, this court is not free to impose its own view of the law,” the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s opinions state.

“The Oklahoma Constitution reaffirms the effect of the supremacy clause on Oklahoma law by providing, ‘The state of Oklahoma is an inseparable part of the federal union, and the constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land.’”

This is not the first time this year that Oklahoma’s Supreme Court has rejected a state-level abortion restriction for standing in sharp opposition to Roe v. Wade. Just over a month ago, the court ruled that proposed “personhood” initiative — part of the far-right effort to endow fetuses with the full rights of U.S. citizenship by redefining personhood at conception, which would serve to outlaw all abortion services and even some forms of contraception — are “clearly unconstitutional,” pointing out that such an initiative would go too far to restrict a woman’s right to choose.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, the women’s health advocacy group that filed the legal challenges to both of the state laws, is celebrating the court’s clear protection of women’s constitutional rights. Michelle Movahed, one of the group’s attorneys, told the Oklahoman that the court’s decision may help Oklahoma lawmakers reconsider their approach to abortion legislation. “I hope that the Oklahoma Legislature does take a lesson and turn to subjects that won’t involve clear violations of the Constitution,” she said.

The highest court in the United States dealt a blow to the far-right “personhood” movement yesterday when it declined to hear an appeal from Personhood Oklahoma, an anti-abortion group seeking to challenge a lower court’s ruling that struck down their proposed ballot amendment.

Far-reaching personhood amendments would endow fertilized eggs with the same constitutional rights as people, and could also serve to outlaw invitro fertilization and some forms of contraception. In April, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that personhood is “clearly unconstitutional,” blocking a proposed personhood amendment from the state’s ballot because it would have gone too far to limit women’s right to choose. Personhood Oklahoma attempted to appeal their case to the Supreme Court, hoping to overturn the lower court’s decision — but as the Hill reports, the Supreme Court declined to hear Personhood Oklahoma’s appeal yesterday, putting a definitive end to personhood advocates’ quest to advance the ballot issue in that state:

By rejecting the appeal, the justices left in place a lower court’s decision that found a personhood measure in Oklahoma would violate the Constitution.

Only four of the nine justices have to agree for the court to take a case, so Monday’s rejection could be a sign that the court’s four conservative justices aren’t interested in wading into personhood, a concept that has divided opponents of abortion rights. [...]

The justices do not explain their decisions to accept or deny cases, and did not offer an explanation for declining to hear the personhood suit.

Even aside from yesterday’s decision, personhood activists have not had much recent success. Oklahoma lawmakers failed to bring a personhood initiative up for a vote in their House earlier this year, effectively killing the legislation. And in other states across the country, personhood groups have repeatedly struggled to advance their agenda, failing to collect enough signatures to land personhood amendments on the ballot in Nevada and Florida and losing the popular vote in Colorado and Mississippi.

In the latest attack on Planned Parenthood and the essential health services it provides for women, the Oklahoma State Department of Health effectively cut off federal funding for the Planned Parenthood affiliates in their state by ending the organization’s WIC contract. Without the funds from the WIC program, which provides food vouchers for low-income mothers and their children, three Planned Parenthood clinics in the Tulsa area will be forced to close, leaving some low-income women without any other way to participate in the WIC program.

Tulsa World reports that some low-income mothers in the Tulsa area say they won’t continue to use WIC benefits if they can’t access them through the Planned Parenthood clinics they have been using for years:

Tiffany Rosales, the mother of three sons ranging in age from 11 months to 9 years, has been going to the same Planned Parenthood clinic for about 10 years.

Rosales called other local WIC clinics after hearing about the contract termination but said she found that it would be three to four months before she could get an appointment. She has decided she won’t go anywhere else to get WIC services and probably won’t be using the program anymore. [...]

Shawna Benson said she also will try to forgo WIC services if she can no longer receive them at a Planned Parenthood clinic because she wouldn’t be comfortable anywhere else.

Benson can’t read, but the women at the Midtown Health Center WIC clinic would always help her with paperwork and make sure she understood documents. They did so without making her feel ashamed of her inability to read the papers on her own, she said.

She doesn’t think other clinics would operate the same way, she said.

Rosales also said that although she opposes abortion, Planned Parenthood clinics that administer the WIC program shouldn’t be caught up in political fights. “They shouldn’t put WIC through that,” she said. The Planned Parenthood clinics in Tulsa do not provide abortion services, although they do provide referrals for women seeking abortions.

Texas, which employed a similar tactic earlier this year to cut off Planned Parenthood’s funding for services to low-income women, could provide a model for what lies in store for Oklahoma women. With funding for family planning organizations under attack, over 50 women’s health clinics were forced to close across Texas — and in one county, defunding Planned Parenthood caused women’s services to drop by a staggering 93 percent.

The Oklahoma State Department of Heath has just announced that it will end its WIC contract with the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates, effectively cutting off the federal funding that the organization’s clinics rely on to provide health services to low-income women.

The WIC program — which uses federal funds to provide food vouchers to low-income pregnant women, mothers, and young children — has been in partnership with three out of the four Tulsa-area Planned Parenthood clinics for the past 18 years, and the dissolution of the contract may force those clinics to close.The state’s Department of Health did not give a reason for the contract’s termination, saying only that it will not be renewed for “business reasons.”

Jill June, the president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, told the Tulsa World that she believes the decision to end WIC funding to her organization was politically motivated, as anti-choice legislators across the country work to target Planned Parenthood affiliates as a central tactic in their ongoing War on Women:

“We’re going to do whatever we can to preserve our ability to continue to serve these women and children, because we know that’s what they want and we know that we are a very good provider,” [June] said.

The clinics in the Tulsa area have about 3,000 WIC visits a month, a spokesman said. [...]

“I think we deserve some answers, but, more importantly, the women who come to Planned Parenthood, they shouldn’t be caught up in what I fear is a political attack,” June said.

Oklahoma appears to be following in the footsteps of the state of Texas, which cut off funds to Planned Parenthood’s clinics by making the organization ineligible for the Medicaid funding that helps the organization provide services to low-income women. Just as in Texas, Oklahoma’s Planned Parenthood facilities do not actually perform abortions — in fact, they provide critical preventative care like cancer screening and contraceptive services to low-income women who would otherwise be unable to afford that type of care. Politically-motivated attacks on women’s health have already forced at least 50 health clinics in Texas to close, painting a bleak picture of what could be in store for the women living in Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma Health Care Authority has just released a report estimating that accepting the expansion of Medicaid coverage could save their state nearly $48 million a year. Their findings are similar to the results from another recent study that estimated $350 million in savings for Arkansas under the expansion.

The Obamacare provision that expands Medicaid coverage to an estimated 17 million low-income people is popular with the majority of Americans, but Republican governors in states across the country have been resisting accepting the expansion. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) has said she will not decide on whether or not accept the Medicaid expansion until after the presidential election.

As the Tulsa World reports, opting into the expansion of the Medicaid program would be a good move for Oklahoma because it would free up state money for other necessary programs, such as mental health services:

Services currently funded completely with state money would shift to Medicaid funding – allowing the state to either shift its tax money to other uses or magnify its ability to provide those services.

“I think it’s darn sure one of the selling points for accepting” the Medicaid expansion, said Michael Brose, executive director of the Mental Health Association in Tulsa.

Carter Kimble, spokesman for the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, said first-draft estimates of potential state savings with the Medicaid expansion show that the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services could save $34 million, the Corrections Department $11.2 million, and the state Health Department $2.4 million.

Oklahoma and Arkansas are not alone. The Urban Institute estimates that 21 to 45 states would save money by taking the Medicaid expansion. In fact, many of the Southern states whose Republicans governors have been most resistant to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion would actually benefit most from expanding the program.

Students at a public Oklahoma high school were given copies of a movie that compares abortion to the Holocaust after a local family asked the principal if they could distribute the DVDs to students, according to a local TV station. The movie begins with images of Hitler and concentration camps before making a comparison between the Holocaust and abortion.

The principal agreed to hand out the anti-abortion film, titled 180, if students obtained parental consent first, but the copies were handed out before parents were notified. One parent told Fox 23 heard about it from her stepdaughter:

“She said that she had seen a DVD in school that basically said that if you have an abortion then you are no better than the Nazis and you will go to hell,” says concerned parent, Marty Angus.

Angus was furious after his stepdaughter came home and told him she had seen it in class.

“She said well, we went to our lockers on break and there was a note that said come pick up your free DVD,” says Angus.

Officials confiscated the movies after realizing how graphic the movie was, but two classrooms saw it first. “I thought it was graphic and a clear violation between church and state and it was just awful to be shown to a high school student,” Marty Angus, whose stepdaughter saw the movie in class, told Fox 23.

The Christian ministry Living Waters produced the movie. When it was released in 2011, the Anti-Defamation League called the fillm “one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years.”