Amendments To Abortion Bills Approved Requirement Of Parental Consent For Teen Abortions Splits North Idaho Senators

North Idaho senators split down the middle Thursday, as the Senate debated controversial amendments to a bill seeking to restrict abortion.

The Senate sided with its Republican leadership on the key question: whether to keep the bill’s requirement for a parent’s written consent before a minor can get an abortion.

Opponents - including all five of the female senators voting - said the bill’s version of parental consent was too stringent.

“A person, a young lady who’s in this position has got enough trauma without having to go kiss somebody’s foot to get help,” said Sen. Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum.

Boatright and Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, voted against Senate leaders on the parental consent question. Sens. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden, and Jack Riggs, R-Coeur d’Alene, voted with leadership.

The bill, HB610, with the parental consent requirement, will be up for a final vote in the Senate this morning. If it passes, it will go back to the House to see if the House agrees to the amendments.

Also this morning, HB576, a bill banning so-called “partial-birth” abortions, is scheduled for a final Senate vote.

HB610, which earlier passed the House, was proposed by the Idaho Family Forum and co-sponsored by Rep. Jeff Alltus, R-Hayden.

Crow said his “heart was breaking” as the amendments were debated.

“I wanted to get this bill passed, and I didn’t think it would survive with the other amendments,” he said. “All our attempts over here were to get a (HB) 610 that would pass the Senate, and positively impact abortion in Idaho. I’m hopeful we accomplished that.”

Crow said he plans to vote for both abortion bills today.

“I campaigned from a very strong pro-life position,” he said. “It’s what I believe.”

Riggs said he can’t say for sure how he’ll vote. “I’m going to read them as amended,” he said.

Riggs said he sided with leadership on the amendments because Senate leaders had conferred with the Idaho attorney general’s office in drafting them.

Plus, he said he thought his positions on other issues, from welfare reform to teen access to tobacco, were consistent with supporting parental consent for abortion.

“A lot of those things have to do with picking a time of majority, say 18 years, and saying before that we’re going to ask parents to have responsibility.”

Two competing packages of amendments were offered, one from the Senate leadership, and the other from Sens. Sheila Sorensen, R-Boise, and Judi Danielson, R-Council.

The Senate leaders’ amendments, which passed on divided votes, pared down the restrictions in HB610 and refined some language, but left most of the bill’s key provisions in place.

They did, however, delete provisions for extensive new reporting requirements and doctor duties that opponents said were unnecessary and would only raise the cost of abortion in Idaho.

Sorensen’s amendments would have deleted the bill’s parental consent requirement. Sorensen said the concept of parental consent was fine, but the bill did a poor job of allowing for those situations where a teenager can’t get a parent’s consent, such as in incest cases.

The bill would allow a minor to get a judge’s order, and if the judge won’t agree, to appeal to the Idaho Supreme Court.

Sorensen said, “If these young people are having difficulty talking to their parents, how are they going to talk to a judge?”

Senate President Pro-tem Jerry Twiggs, R-Blackfoot, argued that the bill as amended would do just two things: add parental consent requirements and bring Idaho’s existing abortion laws up to constitutional standards.

Keough said she thought that was important, and said she will vote for both bills this morning.

“I’m concerned that the parental consent procedures as outlined in the bill before it was amended were cumbersome and lose sight of the fact that not every family is a perfect family. But I’ll be supporting the final bill.”

Keough, who was visibly upset during the debate, said, “It’s a very personal and emotional issue, and I don’t think there was a senator on that floor that was not impacted emotionally.”

Although she supports the bills, Keough said, “I would like to focus my time on this issue on preventing the need for abortion … on education as a means to end abortion.”

, DataTimes