Spouses Can’t Veto Abortion--High Court

The Supreme Court today refused to give husbands the legal power to prevent their wives from having abortions.

The justices, without comment, let stand an Indiana Supreme Court decision that a husband has no right to interfere with his wife’s constitutional right to abort her pregnancy.

The court also told deposed Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife, Imelda, that they must turn over subpoenaed records to a federal grand jury.

Based on Past Rulings

The state court’s ruling in the abortion case last July was based directly on past rulings by the nation’s highest court.

Erin Andrew Conn of Elkhart, Ind., went to court early last summer in an attempt to prevent his estranged wife, Jennifer, from having an abortion. She was about six weeks pregnant at the time.

A state trial judge issued a temporary order barring her from having the operation performed, but a state appeals court threw out that order.

“Erin has no right to veto Jennifer’s decision . . . as such decision concerns only her,” the appeals court ruled.

The Indiana Supreme Court, acting on Conn’s subsequent appeal, then adopted the appeals court ruling as its own.

The state courts said Conn’s attempt to block his wife’s abortion was prohibited by prior Supreme Court rulings dating to 1973, when a landmark decision by the justices legalized abortion.

In 1976, the court struck down a Missouri law requiring spousal consent before a woman could obtain an abortion during the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy.

Emergency Help Denied

After the state Supreme Court ruling, Conn sought emergency help from Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice John Paul Stevens. Both denied his request, and the injunction prohibiting his wife’s abortion was lifted July 22.

She subsequently obtained an abortion. The Conns are in the midst of divorce proceedings. Conn’s attorney, James Bopp of Terre Haute, said a decree is expected within days.

In the appeal acted on today, Conn said the 1973 and 1976 rulings did not preclude state courts from taking a husband’s rights into consideration “on a case-by-case basis.”

“The father has fundamental rights and interests in his unborn child which should be judicially considered, on the facts of this case, along with the rights and interests of his wife in aborting their child,” lawyers for Conn argued.

The appeal, which did not directly attack the court’s previous abortion decisions, said consideration of a husband’s objections is justified by “the traditional balancing approved by this court where competing rights collide.”

‘Without Merit’

Lawyers for Jennifer Conn called the appeal “entirely without merit.”

“Every appellate court to consider the issue has held that a man does not have the right to a court order enjoining a woman from exercising her abortion right,” they said. “This has been true in cases where the man seeking the court order was the woman’s husband.”

In other cases, the court:

--Denied the Marcoses’ emergency request that they not be compelled to abide by a grand jury’s demand for financial and other records related to an investigation of the couple, charged with looting their nation’s treasury of more than $100 million.

A federal judge in New York, where the grand jury is meeting, ruled Aug. 11 that the Marcoses must honor the subpoenas and no longer have immunity as ruler and first lady of a foreign country.

--Let stand an appellate ruling that the federal Voting Rights Act, designed to prevent racial discrimination, applies to state judicial elections.