Justice Kennedy Blocks an Abortion for Florida Girl, 15

In a highly unusual move, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy granted an emergency request by a legal guardian for an “unborn child” Tuesday and blocked a 15-year-old Florida girl from having an abortion.

Kennedy’s order was issued about three hours after the Florida Supreme Court said that the girl could go ahead with her abortion.

The full U.S. Supreme Court will consider the issue Thursday and may lift or continue Kennedy’s order then.

Possibly Decisive Votes

Kennedy, former President Ronald Reagan’s third nominee to the high court, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor hold the two unknown and probably decisive votes in a major abortion case now pending before the court.

His surprise order Tuesday was unusual because the U.S. Supreme Court traditionally does not act on cases pending in state courts. Rather, it has been the court’s practice to review only the final orders of a state’s highest court.

In this case, the Florida Supreme Court has not issued a final order but instead announced Friday that it will consider in September the constitutionality of a law regulating abortions for minors. In the interim, the state court said, minor girls may go ahead with abortions.

But, acting on a request Tuesday morning by a lawyer representing the “unborn child” of a minor, Kennedy issued an order to block any further action by the girl in this case.

The girl, now 12 weeks pregnant and identified only as “T. W.,” is caught in an intense legal struggle over Florida’s new law regulating abortions for minors. Until Kennedy’s order is lifted, she is forbidden to get an abortion in that state.

The 1988 Florida statute says that a minor girl may not get an abortion without the consent of her parents or the permission of a judge. Fearing “abuse” from her parents, T. W. on May 2 asked a judge in Lake County, Fla., for permission to have an abortion.

Rather than simply grant her request, the judge struck down the entire law as “unconstitutionally vague” and “arbitrary.” However, the same judge appointed a lawyer, Richard Boylston, to represent T. W.’s unborn child in an appeal.

Boylston did, but lost. On Friday, a state appellate court agreed that the law was unconstitutional. On the same day, however, the Florida Supreme Court announced that it would hear a further appeal in the fall. But, so that the girl would not be penalized by the legal dispute, the state judges lifted any court orders applying to her as of Tuesday at 10 a.m.

Kennedy has the duty to consider emergency appeals from the Southeast region, and Boylston urged him Tuesday morning to intervene in the Florida case. “In the absence of a stay, the unborn child of T. W., a minor, and hundreds of other unborn children will be aborted pending a decision by the Florida Supreme Court,” the attorney said in his petition.

Kennedy responded a few hours later by granting the requested stay, presumably to take the matter before the full court. His action, in effect, reinstates the 1988 law for all other pregnant minors.

Fetus’ Rights Curbed

In the Roe vs. Wade ruling of 1973, the Supreme Court said that a woman has a constitutional right to end her pregnancy in the first trimester. In addition, the justices refused to recognize a legal right for a fetus in the early months of a pregnancy.

But Kennedy’s appointment last year created a five-member conservative majority on the court, and the justices are now considering a Missouri case that they could use to revise or even overrule the Roe decision.