Supreme Court to take on parental consent

The Supreme Court agreed today to hear New Hampshire’s appeal of two lower court decisions that struck down the state’s law restricting young women’s access to abortion:
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the 2003 law was unconstitutional because it didn’t provide an exception to protect the minor’s health in the event of a medical emergency.
…In their appeal, New Hampshire officials argued that the abortion law need not have an “explicit health exception” because other state provisions call for exceptions when the mother’s health is at risk. They also asked justices to clarify the legal standard that is applied when reviewing the constitutionality of abortion laws.
The New Hampshire law required that a parent or guardian be notified if an abortion was to be done on a woman under 18. The notification had to be made in person or by certified mail 48 hours before the pregnancy was terminated.
…Abortion laws are “entirely different than parental involvement laws, which obviously do not purport to ban abortions, but simply seek to promote the interests of minors in having the benefit of parental involvement,” New Hampshire legislators wrote in a friend-of-the-court filing.
Oh yeah, this isn’t about restricting abortion at all. We’re just…you know…looking out for the kids and stuff. You have to be fucking kidding me. If this is really about the “interests of minors,” then why isn’t there a health exception?
Bullying teenage girls is just an easy way to erode reproductive rights.
FYI: This will be the Supreme Court’s first consideration of a minors’ abortion law since the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision in 1992, in which Pennsylvania’s one-parent consent law was upheld.