Senate abortion-consent bill advances

BOISE – Lawmakers moved forward Monday with legislation requiring doctors to get permission from a girl’s parent before performing an abortion, despite concerns from opponents who say the mandate would harm girls from dysfunctional or abusive homes.

Members of the Senate State Affairs Committee approved a bill making it a felony for a doctor to knowingly provide an abortion to a minor without a parent’s written consent or intervention by a judge. While opponents of SB 1082 said the legislation might discourage girls from seeking safe abortions, anti-abortion advocates told legislators that it would save lives and protects parents’ rights.

“If we do not pass this bill, we will continue to spend money on litigation,” said Sen. Russ Fulcher, R-Meridian, a bill sponsor. “More importantly to me, minor girls in Idaho will be left unprotected, that is, without parental counsel in such a critical time in their lives.”

The bill does include a provision allowing abortions for minors in the case of rape, incest or a medical emergency.

A federal judge struck down Idaho’s former parental notification law, passed by the Legislature in 2005, saying it had a “chilling effect” on legal abortions. The state is appealing that decision in district court.

Fulcher said the proposed legislation is modeled after language from other states that has passed constitutional review. The bill is “cutting no new ground,” he said, and it should stop the “endless litigation” about parental notification.

“To the best extent possible, we believe that we’ve got language here that will pass muster,” he said. “I know you’ve heard that before, but in this case, this language has been heard and considered.”

Fulcher said he has “good reason to believe” that the state’s appeal would be moot if the law passed. But he refused to guarantee lawmakers that abortion rights groups wouldn’t take the new law to court.

“They’ll have to do some gymnastics to get there, but we’ve seen stranger things,” he said.

Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood of Idaho declined to say whether those groups would legally challenge the proposal if it becomes law, but they agreed that the legislation removes the controversial language of its predecessor.

Some Idahoans testified that Idaho’s lack of a notification requirement has interfered with parents’ abilities to fulfill their duties.

Star resident Sue Drayton said she intervened last year when her 17-year-old daughter became pregnant. She said her daughter’s boyfriend and his family pressured the girl to have an abortion, but said she made her child aware of the physical, emotional and spiritual effects of abortion.

The girl had the baby and gave it up for adoption, Drayton said.

“Knowing that she could have received an abortion without parental consent was very frightening as a parent,” she said. “I would do absolutely anything to protect my child, and I have never felt so helpless and unsupported by our system.”

Anti-abortion activist Marvin Richardson, who has legally changed his name to Pro-Life, said lawmakers will be “held accountable in the Great Judgment after this is over.” He compared abortion to slavery, saying the nation needs a “constitutional crisis” that would occur when one state outlaws abortion and refuses to yield to court rulings against it.

“In God’s eyes, it’s murder,” he said. “We’re talking about the regulation of murder.”

But Burke Hays, a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of Idaho, said his organization opposes the legislation because it is “unnecessary for teens who come from healthy families and dangerous for those who do not.”

Most teens talk with their parents before seeking an abortion, Hays said.

“In many cases, however, teens who are unable to talk to their parents regarding abortions come from broken or abusive homes,” he said. “Unfortunately, the stipulations of Senate Bill 1082 do nothing to foster healthy dialogue in those families but instead only mandate a potentially dangerous discussion.”

Brandi Swindell, founder of anti-abortion group Generation Life, called abortion rights views expressed Monday “deeply troubling and flawed.” Without a notification law, the state would be encouraging girls to yield to abuse when it should be connecting them with resources to help them, she said.

Yet Boise Rabbi Dan Fink, who brought his two teenage daughters, said parents deserve to know about teen abortions “if they earn that trust,” he said.

“It should not be the job of the courts to enforce parental communication,” Fink said.

Even as an adult, he would not know how to petition the court like girls would be required to do, he said. Lawmakers thinking girls could do that is “to be out of touch with who these young women are,” he said.

Several opponents of the bill said promoting sex education and birth control are the best ways to reduce teen pregnancies.

Sen. Mike Jorgenson, R-Hayden Lake, said he voted for the bill because that’s what his constituents sent him to Boise to do. He said anti-abortion legislation is one of his defining issues.

The only Republican to vote against it, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston, said he would support parental notification but not parental consent requirements.

Members of the committee voted 7-2 to send the bill to the Senate floor.