A requirement that girls tell their parents violates their privacy rights, Florida's highest court rules.
By LISA GREENE
Published July 11, 2003
Forcing a girl to tell her parents before she gets an abortion violates her privacy rights under Florida's Constitution, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Abortion-rights and privacy advocates called the ruling a "ringing reaffirmation" of the strong privacy rights Floridians have, stronger than those provided by the U.S. Constitution. They said it showed compassion for girls.
But abortion foes denounced the ruling as judicial activism "at its worst." They said it ignores parents' rights and will allow girls to be exploited by older boyfriends and endangered by uncaring doctors. Gov. Jeb Bush said he may go to lawmakers with a new bill.
"I'm really disappointed," Bush told reporters Thursday. "It's hard to believe that we live in a society where parents wouldn't be notified of an abortion, which is a very profound decision."
The 5-1 ruling overturns a 1999 law that was challenged immediately and has never been enforced. It means that Florida will remain, for now at least, one of a handful of states that does not require teenagers to tell parents or get their consent before getting an abortion.
The law required that in most cases, doctors give a parent 48 hours notice before a girl under 18 could get an abortion. Girls could go to a judge instead, and the law wouldn't apply in medical emergencies.
But forcing a girl to tell a parent or a judge about her pregnancy would require her to disclose "one of the most intimate aspects of her private life," wrote Justice Leander Shaw in the majority opinion.
The ruling will help girls in fractured families, said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
"It's optimal when young women involve their parents in reproductive health decisions, but it just doesn't work out that way," she said. "We know from working with teens . . . that the ones who are most at risk for unintended pregnancies may be the least able to turn to their parents in a crisis situation."
Feldt stressed that for many pregnant girls, there is "virtually no distinction" between having to tell a parent about a pregnancy and getting a parent's consent for an abortion.
Girls forced to tell may face abuse, or may harm themselves rather than talk, said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.
"When the courts force family involvement, the consequences frequently have been catastrophic - suicide, beatings and so on," he said.
But opponents said girls will suffer, left vulnerable when they need parents' help most.
"Innocent kids who have great relationships with their parents can make mistakes," said Mathew Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, which filed a brief on behalf of antiabortion medical groups.
"It robs parents of the right to have involvement in health care decisions that have serious side effects, physically and mentally, on their children," said Sheila Hopkins, associate for social concerns with the Florida Catholic Conference.
What happens, Hopkins asked, if a teenage girl has medical conditions that make an abortion more dangerous? What if she has medical problems afterward and can't get help?
It's unclear how many girls the notification law would have affected in Florida, but the Alan Guttmacher Institute said that more than 97,000 girls under 18 had abortions in the United States in 1999.
Notification proponents knew the bill was legally risky from the start. In 1989, the court struck down a similar law requiring parental consent. Legislative staffers warned that the court might overturn the notification on the same grounds - that it violated girls' rights to privacy.
The privacy right cited by justices stems from an addition to the state Constitution granting Floridians the "right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion." It was proposed by the Legislature and ratified by the voters in 1980.
The state must have a "compelling interest" to interfere in a person's right to privacy, the majority said Thursday. And the state failed to show why it should make girls tell about an abortion, but not about other medical procedures.
The decision didn't come easily for the court. Abortion is "one of the most gut-wrenching, emotionally laden issues of past decades in Florida," Shaw wrote.
"We cannot be ruled by emotion," Shaw wrote. "Rather, we are sworn to uphold the law of each state and to decide each case deliberately, based solely on the law."
But in dissenting on the ruling, Justice Charles Wells said the majority failed to do that. The ruling is "ultimately a policy decision, not a constitutional decision," he wrote, saying the other justices failed to see the difference between notice and consent.
The majority also failed to see society's real interests, Wells said.
"It is simply logical to me that the community . . . has an exceedingly compelling interest in having parents parent their children," he said.
Justices felt so strongly about the issue that each one wrote a separate opinion in the 137-page ruling. Justice Fred Lewis agreed with the majority's result, but said its interpretation of the court's 1989 ruling against the parental consent law ran "entirely contrary to logic and common sense."
That left Staver of the Liberty Counsel counting votes. He pointed out that the newest justices, Bush appointees Raoul Cantero and Kenneth Bell, didn't take part in Thursday's ruling, while Shaw has since retired. A new court likely would feel differently if lawmakers pass a new bill, he said.
"This is viewed as only a temporary setback," he said.
But Simon of the ACLU said the ruling will not be so easily overcome. It could reach beyond notification rules to other cases, such as the recent debate over whether a guardian could be appointed for a fetus being carried by a mentally disabled rape victim.
"Today's opinion is a ringing reaffirmation of Florida's constitutional privacy rights," he said. "This is going to protect the constitutional privacy rights of every person in Florida."
- Times staff writer Steve Bousquet and staff researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.
Laws regarding abortion and minors
States requiring parental consent in at least some cases (in effect): Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
States requiring parental consent in at least some cases (not in effect): Alaska, California, New Mexico, Ohio (but parental notification law in effect).
States requiring parental notification in at least some cases (in effect): Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, New Hampshire (becomes effective Dec. 31, 2003).
States requiring parental notification in at least some cases (not in effect): Illinois, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma.
States not requiring parental involvement: Florida (after Supreme Court decision Thursday), Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, District of Columbia.
- Sources: Alan Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
