Judge blocks state’s new abortion law

BOISE – A federal judge on Friday forbade the state from enforcing a new law requiring a minor to get parental consent for an abortion, ruling elements of the measure passed by the 2005 Legislature could have a “chilling effect” on legal abortions.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction against a law that sought to prevent teens under 18 from getting an abortion unless they had written consent from their parents or a court waiver.

The decision is a blow to efforts by an Idaho Legislature dominated by social conservatives to require parents to be informed when minors have abortions. Winmill wrote in his 26-page ruling that the law puts an undue burden on a minor’s constitutional right to an abortion.

“We are thrilled with today’s decision,” said Marty Durand, Boise-based lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which in April joined with Planned Parenthood to try and overturn the law. “One can only hope that … the Legislature will take the hint and stop passing laws that jeopardize young women’s health and safety.”

Last July, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, ruled that a previous Idaho parental-consent law passed in 2000 failed to provide sufficient access to an abortion for minors who needed one for medical reasons. That court objected to provisions limiting medical emergency abortions to “sudden and unexpected” instances of physical complications.

The new Idaho law was meant to replace that one.

With Friday’s victory, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood now plan to ask for a permanent injunction, Durand said.

Jeremy Chou, a deputy attorney general who argued the case for the state, wouldn’t rule out an appeal.

“They scored in the first inning,” Chou said. “The next time around, we’ll see. It’s not the entire game.”

According to Winmill’s ruling, provisions of the law that allowed bypass of parental-consent requirements would have led court-appointed guardians to report consensual sex between unmarried persons – the cause of most minor pregnancies in Idaho – to law-enforcement agents.

Such “fornication” – even between consenting adults – is a crime in Idaho punishable by up to 6 months in jail, and it’s been enforced in the last year.

“A bypass process that requires the minor to sell out her close-in-age boyfriend for a bypass is neither adequate nor completed with anonymity,” Winmill wrote, adding that a girl, faced with informing abusive parents or snitching on her boyfriend to obtain an abortion, “will most likely choose neither.”

Rep. Bill Sali, R-Kuna, an abortion foe who sponsored last session’s bill, said in an interview that he’d hoped this latest law would pass constitutional muster. Winmill’s rejection was a disappointment, he said.

“Going to court and having Planned Parenthood win is painful to me,” Sali said. “At the end of the day, what we have right now, in the state of Idaho, because of Judge Winmill’s decision, is no protection for the rights of parents to be involved in their young daughters’ lives when it comes to abortion.”

At least 33 states have parental consent or parental notification laws.

The problem with Idaho’s, said Rebecca Poedy, president of Planned Parenthood in Idaho, is it doesn’t give girls who don’t want to tell their mother or father recourse in a way that guarantees parents won’t find out.

“Idaho could pass a parental consent law that is constitutional,” Poedy said. “But Idaho wants to have one of most restrictive parental-consent laws on the books.”