In what could not be a more timely reminder of how much is at stake, this week the Supreme Court announced that it will consider a case involving a state law requiring young women under 18 to notify a parent before getting an abortion even if the delay caused by doing so could seriously endanger their health. The announcement came just hours before the announcement of the Senate “deal” to avert the nuclear option, just days before the Senate confirmed Priscilla Owen, whose nomination was controversial in part because of rulings she issued on a state parental notification law, and amid rampant speculation about whether Chief Justice Rehnquist will retire in June, creating the first vacancy in 11 years on a Supreme Court that is closely divided on the subject of abortion. Whew!
The case the Supreme Court has taken up and the controversial cases Owen decided in Texas don’t deal with exactly the same issue, but they all have to do with exceptions to the laws requiring girls to notify their parents before having an abortion. The cases that Judge Owen considered in Texas were about specific pregnant teenagers who were seeking a judge’s permission to have an abortion without notifying a parent; the court weighed whether the girls were mature enough to make the decision on their own, and whether they had shown a risk that they would be abused if they notified their parents of their pregnancies. In almost every case, Owen voted to deny the teenager the judicial “bypass.”
The Supreme Court case, called Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, asks whether New Hampshire’s law requiring pregnant girls to notify a parent 48 hours before getting an abortion is unconstitutional because it doesn’t contain an exception for health emergencies. The Supreme Court may also decide the question of whether courts should continue their current practice of striking down laws like New Hampshire’s if the law might be unconstitutional as applied to someone, or if they should wait until they are faced with an unconstitutional application of the law—in this case, that would mean allowing the New Hampshire law to stand until an actual pregnant teenager with a health emergency challenged the law in court.
Although the legal issues in these cases can seem hypertechnical—even, dare we say it, boring?—the cases show just how much courts’ interpretations of parental notification laws can affect the lives of young women in need of help.
