Americans would seem to have won a big victory for family unity and parental wisdom. At least that’s what the U.S. Supreme Court said it was providing last June 25 with its decision to uphold state laws that deny teenagers abortions until their parents are notified. “It is both rational and fair for the state to conclude,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, “that, in most instances, the family will strive to give a lonely or even terrified minor advice that is both compassionate and mature.” Kennedy was writing for a 6-3 majority that upheld an Ohio law making it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion on an unmarried minor unless at least one parent is notified first. The law makes an exception if a judge has approved the abortion.
“We hope that [the law] will reduce the number of abortions,” says Ann-Louise Lohr, one of eight lawyers with the Americans United for Life Legal Defense Fund. But she argues for parental notification laws in classically general terms. “The right of a parent to be involved in rearing and guidance and upbringing of an immature, unemancipated dependent child has been well established by the U.S. Supreme Court, not just in the abortion context but back in the 30s and 40s and before that in the area of education, health care, religion,” says Lohr. “This is an example of where the Supreme Court has said that if the parents aren’t going to be involved, then a judge has to be. It can be beneficial for a minor. If she is being physically or sexually or severely emotionally abused at home and can’t tell her parents, this law benefits her because it gets her into the judicial system where she needs to be so that the court system can help her rather than cover up that abuse.”
The Minnesota law requires a physician who is approached by a minor (under 18) for an abortion to notify both her parents, regardless of the girl’s present relationship with them, and then wait 48 hours before performing the abortion. A divorced father living in another state, a father who had abandoned his family years earlier, a father long estranged from his daughter nonetheless must be notified unless the girl chooses to avail herself of the judicial bypass the law provides for.
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But now compare the Minneapolis numbers provided by that city’s department of health with those for the state as a whole. Minneapolis is by far the largest of the three urban areas in Minnesota and has the largest minority population, though it’s only about 15 percent of the city’s population. These figures are for births and abortions only among 15-to-17-year-olds, because the city does not calculate pregnancy rates.
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In a 1989 Supreme Court brief, AUL attempted to explain away the soaring Minneapolis birthrate by ascribing it to an influx of “Asian Pacifics.” There was an influx, particularly of Hmong, who have one of the highest birthrates in the world. Even so, in 1988 Asian Pacifics accounted for only 6.7 percent of the births in Minneapolis. They could not have produced all those extra babies by themselves. If parental notification had an effect on adolescent sexual behavior in Minneapolis, the most apparent effect seems to have been on how adolescents reacted to pregnancy when it happened.
