State Files Emergency Plea for Enforcement of Abortion Law

The state filed an emergency appeal Wednesday seeking to enforce a parental consent law for minors’ abortions, saying a court order blocking the law will harm pregnant girls and violate their parents’ rights.

“The only abortions (the law) seeks to prevent are those that can constitutionally be prevented: those chosen by a minor without the capacity or knowledge to make a proper choice,” said Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp in papers filed with a state appeals court.

If a Superior Court order blocking the state law is allowed to stand, he said, parents “will be denied their constitutional right to guide and control their minor unemancipated daughters’ medical care, as well as their constitutional right to advise their daughters on a matter of profound moral, religious, cultural and ethical significance.”

Van de Kamp asked the 1st District Court of Appeal to issue an order by Thursday allowing the law to take effect Friday, as scheduled, while the court considers whether the law violates the constitutional right of privacy.

The law would require an unmarried girl under 18 to get written consent from one parent for an abortion. She also could try to persuade a judge that she is mature enough to make the decision, or that an abortion is in her best interest.

In a suit by doctors and family planning groups, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Morton Colvin Monday blocked enforcement of the law until a trial on its constitutionality takes place.