A federal court Friday struck down portions of a 2014 Alabama state law allowing court-like proceedings when a minor seeks an abortion without parental consent.
Alabama has required minors to have parental consent before they get an abortion since 1987. The law includes a judicial bypass provision that waives the requirement if a minor can demonstrate to a court that she is mature enough to understand the process and that it would be in her best interest, particularly in cases of physical or sexual abuse.
In 2014, the Alabama Legislature approved changes to the law that required notification of the local district attorney, allowing the possibility of a trial. The law also allows parents to join the case if they learned about it, and also allowed the court to appoint an attorney to represent the fetus in the case, known as a guardian ad litem (GAL). Unlike the earlier law, the GAL would be a party to the proceeding.
In a 54-page opinion, U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Russ Walker called those changes unprecedented and unconstitutional.
"The judicial bypass option is rendered meaningless if, as in Alabama's bypass statute -- which has no counterpart in any other state bypass law -- parents or legal guardians can participate as parties under some circumstances, and if there are insufficient safeguards to protect the anonymity of the minor petitioner," Walker wrote. "These are cornerstone requirements for a judicial bypass law to pass constitutional scrutiny."
The American Civil Liberties Union ACLU, which represented Montgomery-based Reproductive Health Services in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the decision was "a victory for women, for young people, and for reproductive health in Alabama."
"By undermining their confidentiality, this law put teenagers participating in the judicial bypass process in real danger," Andrew Beck, an ACLU attorney, said in a statement.
The Alabama attorney general's office, which defended the law in court, said in a statement Monday it was reviewing the decision.
Walker cited previous federal court cases that upheld the right of pregnant minors to seek a court ruling without parental notification. The judge was particularly critical of language in the law that allowed the DA, GAL or parents or guardian to investigate and subpoena witnesses. It also allowed them to share the identity of the minor with "appropriate court personnel, any witness who has a need to know the minor's identity, or any other person determined by the court who needs to know."
"In order to possess relevant information on the subject of the minor's maturity, whether she is sufficiently informed about the abortion decision, and her best interests, such witnesses almost inevitably would have to be relatives, friends or acquaintances of the petitioner herself -- precisely those members of 'the public' whom she is most likely not to want informed about her decision, and whose opposition to the petition could become coercive," Walker wrote.
The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals on July 12 upheld a lower court's ruling allowing a 12-year-old impregnated by a male relative to get an abortion without her parents' consent. The district attorney in the county where the girl lives objected to the waiver. The reasons are not clear.
According to court records, a relative who impregnated the girl faces a statutory rape charge. The Court of Civil Appeals' decision said the girl's father no longer lives with her and that her mother became physically abusive upon learning of the pregnancy.
The Legislature approved the changes to the law in 2014 as part of a larger package of anti-abortion bills. The one that drew the most attention at the time was a bill that would have banned abortion at the detection of a fetal heartbeat. That bill did not become law.
(c)2017 the Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Ala.)
