Anti-Abortionist Urges Justices to Block Teen-Ager’s Abortion

The general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee entered the dispute Wednesday over whether a 15-year-old Florida girl may end her pregnancy, urging the Supreme Court to order that her abortion be delayed indefinitely.

Indiana attorney James Bopp Jr., in a hastily filed 11-page brief, told the nine justices that there will be “irreparable harm to an unborn child” if they fail to intervene in the pending Florida case.

The brief by Bopp served to further escalate what, until Tuesday, had been a routine question of when the Lake County, Fla., teen-ager--identified in court papers only as “T. W.”--could proceed with an abortion. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the high court’s newest member, had issued an order Tuesday temporarily blocking the abortion, presumably to allow all nine justices to study the matter.

Kennedy acted at the request of a Florida lawyer who represented the fetus.

Normally, the Supreme Court is careful about involving itself in cases pending before state courts, but the developments here demonstrated once more that virtually any local dispute over the issue of abortion can quickly get national attention.

The teen-ager, now 12 weeks pregnant, is left in a legal limbo.

On May 2, saying that she feared “abuse” from her parents if she told them she was pregnant, T. W. had asked a Florida judge for permission to get an abortion under the terms of a 1988 state law regulating abortions for minors.

The Florida law requires a judge to act within 48 hours. But, rather than rule on her request, the judge struck down the entire law as unconstitutional.

The Florida Supreme Court announced last Friday that it would consider the constitutionality of the law in September. But, in the interim, it permitted pregnant minors to proceed with abortions.

Jerri A. Blair of Leesburg, Fla., an attorney for the girl, urged the U.S. high court to vacate Kennedy’s order and to stay out of the dispute. “It is clear that the fetus does not have a legal right or standing to assert its interests under Roe vs. Wade, and a stay would be devastating to T. W.’s clear constitutional right of privacy,” she said in a brief filed Wednesday.

The justices meet privately today and are expected to consider the issue then.

Bopp, who has been a key legal strategist in the anti-abortion movement, said he heard about Kennedy’s order from news reports Tuesday and called Florida lawyer Richard Boylston, who had filed the emergency plea as attorney for the fetus.