Over 30 states already have laws in effect to require either parental consent or parental notification before an abortion can be performed on an underage girl.  None of these laws provide a health exception to waive this requirement.  No crisis has been reported in any of these states to suggest that the health of young girls has been placed at risk because a parent must be notified or consent before their daughter obtains an abortion.

 

New Hampshire passed a law modeled after the Minnesota law, but the First Circuit Court of Appeals declared the New Hampshire law unconstitutional because it lacked a health exception.  The First Circuit ruling ignored the precedents set by previous Supreme Court decisions on other parental notification laws in a 1990 Minnesota case (Hodgson v. Minnesota) and a 1992 Pennsylvania case (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey).  

 

The First Circuit instead chose the 2000 Supreme Court decision against the Nebraska ban on partial birth abortion as the basis for their ruling.  Given the Supreme Court ruled a ban on that abortion procedure was unconstitutional because it lacked a health exception, the First Circuit now decided that the New Hampshire parental notification law was also unconstitutional because it lacked a health exception.  The First Circuit reached this decision in spite of the fact that prior rulings of the Supreme Court have rejected “health exceptions" in the areas of abortion funding and parental involvement laws. 

 

When the Supreme Court heard the New Hampshire parental notification law case (Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England) on November 30th, the media focused on whether the decision in this case would put the "health exception" at risk and threaten the "right to abortion."  The health exception issue raised by the First Circuit has been turned into a discussion about medical emergencies.  Abortion supporters insist that there is no provision in New Hampshire's law for medical emergencies.  They conveniently ignore that medical emergencies are addressed by the life of the mother exception provided in the law. Of course, in their usual sky-is-falling manner, pro-abortion groups claim that the Supreme Court decision on Ayotte could undermine the "health exception they've fought so long to protect."   They have the audacity to suggest, even with over 30 such laws already in force, that allowing the New Hampshire law to stand will effectively end the "health exception" and threaten "reproductive rights." 

 

In fact, the exact opposite is true.  If the First Circuit decision is sustained, the existing parental involvement laws in over 30 states will either be threatened or effectively overturned.  Additionally, all other state laws regulating abortion, most prominently informed consent laws for women seeking abortion, will likely be impacted as well.  Such a result would be a case of legislating from the bench the rivals or exceeds the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, that overturned the laws banning abortion in most states.

 

Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England brought out the hypothetical thinking that some members of the Supreme Court use to justify their opposition to common sense regulations such as parental notification before an abortion is performed on an underage girl.  Judge Breyer expressed concern about a teenage girl entering hospital at 2:00am with a medical emergency.   As he described it, her blood pressure was skyrocketing and she needed the abortion to bring it down or she would become sterile.   I strongly suspect that there is no medical correlation between high blood pressure and sterility.  Breyer’s example is so hypothetical that it is probably a physical impossibility.

 

Unfortunately, until Samuel Alito is confirmed, it is difficult to find more than four solid votes to uphold the New Hampshire law.  Both Clinton appointees, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, appear very unlikely to uphold parental notification.  John Paul Stevens and David Souter can be counted on to join them.  If Sandra Day O’Connor gets the opportunity to vote on this case, it seems the law could easily be declared unconstitutional on a 5-4 vote for lack of a health exception.  Such an outcome would totally ignore the Supreme Court precedents set in 1990 and 1992 and the actual experience with existing state laws.  The reality that this case represents a real threat to existing parental notification and consent laws already in force is shrouded by the semantics used by abortion supporters and their willing accomplices in the media.

 

Assuring this case be decided in favor of the New Hampshire law, and thus protecting the existing laws in over 30 states, appears to require obtaining the vote of Samuel Alito. If it takes placing Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court to achieve this result, we can only point out that the court has already moved far out of the mainstream.  At least 70% of the nation supports parental notification laws, while a majority of current Supreme Court members apparently oppose these laws.