High Court to Rule in Abortion Case : Will Decide if State May Require 24-Hour Waiting Period

The Supreme Court re-entered the abortion fight Tuesday, agreeing to decide whether a state may require girls under 18 who are seeking abortions to wait 24 hours after their parents have been notified.

Attorneys on both sides said that this latest case poses a narrow question but one that may signal whether the high court, under the new leadership of William H. Rehnquist, will put some limits on a woman’s right to abortion.

Since the court first decreed in 1973 that women have such a right, the justices have regularly struck down state laws placing restrictions on abortions--but by increasingly narrow margins.

The court issued its original abortion ruling on a 7-2 vote. In 1983, the court by a 6-3 margin struck down an Akron city ordinance that, among other things, required women and girls seeking an abortion to wait 24 hours. In June, by a 5-4 margin, the court nullified a Pennsylvania law requiring that women be given information on the risks of an abortion.

Lineup Unchanged

By most analyses, the voting lineup on abortion has not changed since then. The vacancy left by retired Chief Justice Warren E. Burger--who was among the four voting in favor of the Pennsylvania law--has been filled by another presumed opponent of an unlimited right to abortion, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. And Rehnquist has voted against the right to an abortion in every case.

The Illinois law under appeal, by focusing on minors, will test whether any votes can be pried away from the five-member majority in favor of abortion rights.

“We’re concerned about any case that provides an opportunity for the court to whittle away at the right to an abortion,” said Kate Michelman, executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League in Washington. “We don’t think this case will be used to review Roe (vs. Wade, the 1973 abortion ruling), but it could lead to further attempts to restrict women’s rights, or a teen-ager’s right, to an abortion.”

‘Immaturity’ Cited

However, attorneys for Illinois say the law is “designed to protect minors against their own immaturity, to foster and preserve the family structure and to protect the right of parents to rear their children.” According to the state’s brief to the court, four other states--Arizona, Idaho, Minnesota and West Virginia--require such a waiting period for girls under age 18.

The Parental Notice of Abortion Act was passed by the Illinois Legislature in 1983 but was struck down by a federal court the next year. In 1985, a federal appeals court said the state could require that a girl’s parents be notified of the impending abortion but that it could not require a 24-hour delay. The justices agreed to hear the state’s appeal of that ruling and are expected to issue a ruling by July (Hartigan vs. Zbaraz, 85-673).

In other actions Tuesday, the court:

--Cleared the way for the extradition to Britain of an accused murderer who belonged to the Irish Republican Army. William Quinn, charged with the 1975 shooting of a London policeman, has been held in San Francisco County Jail for the last five years. He had sought to avoid extradition on the grounds that his was a “political” offense but, under a new treaty with Britain, the United States had agreed to label such people as terrorists and to return them for trial (Quinn vs. Robinson, 86-9).

--Let stand an Oklahoma court ruling that struck down the part of that state’s law that made illegal oral and anal sex between consenting adults. Earlier this year, in a case that focused on homosexuals, the Supreme Court upheld a Georgia law making sodomy illegal. Nevertheless, the justices refused to hear Oklahoma’s appeal, leaving open the question of whether the Georgia decision applies to all adults, or just to homosexuals (Oklahoma vs. Post, 85-2071).

--Refused to hear the appeal of convicted killer Theodore Bundy, who contended that his trial in the murder of a 12-year-old girl was tainted by testimony from an unreliable witness. Bundy, a former University of Utah law student, is awaiting execution on Florida’s Death Row for the 1978 killing of two Florida State University students (Bundy vs. Florida, 85-6964).