Florida Abortion Limitation Struck Down : Court Cites Privacy Law in Voiding Parent Consent Requirement

Florida’s Supreme Court today struck down a law requiring girls to get parental consent before an abortion, ruling that it violates their right to privacy.

The decision comes less than a week before the Legislature is to convene in special session at Gov. Bob Martinez’s request to restrict access to abortion.

“We can conceive of few more personal or private decisions concerning one’s body that one can make in the course of a lifetime,” the court wrote.

“The challenged statute fails because it intrudes upon the privacy of the pregnant minor from conception to birth.”

The court said the state Constitution’s guarantee of privacy outweighs the 1988 law requiring consent of a parent, guardian or judge for a girl under 18 to get an abortion.

The Florida Constitution is one of the few in the country that expressly and in strong terms guarantees the right to privacy, the court said.

The decision comes in the case of a 15-year-old Lake County girl initially denied permission for an abortion by a judge. A state appeals court later found the law unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Court records showed that the teen-ager legally ended her pregnancy while the appeal was pending. She was identified in court records as a high school student who was worried that news of an abortion would “kill” her ailing mother.

Ken Connor, president of Florida Right to Life, called the decision “a big defeat for the unborn child.”

Jerri A. Blair, the girl’s attorney, hailed the ruling, calling it “a direct and very explicit endorsement of the right to privacy. It provides extra insulation to right of choice in Florida.”

Four of the seven justices joined in the majority opinion, two wrote concurring opinions and Justice Parker McDonald wrote that the decision goes against common law provisions that say minors do not have the right to enter into contracts.