High Court Urged to Reject Minors’ Abortion Rights

The Bush Administration renewed its attack on abortion in the Supreme Court Friday, urging the justices to abandon the notion that either teen-age girls or adult women have a “fundamental right” to choose abortion.

And even if the court is not ready to overrule this right for adult women, it should certainly do so for teen-age girls, the Justice Department said.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, the Administration urged support for a Minnesota law requiring unmarried teen-age girls to notify both of their parents, even if they are divorced and living separately, before getting an abortion.

“There is utterly no support for the proposition that a minor has a fundamental right to keep her parents in the dark about her welfare,” the brief said. “Indeed, if there is a fundamental right implicated by this case, this court’s decisions suggest it is the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, not the right of children to evade parental control.”

A trial judge struck down the law after it had been in effect five years, concluding that it had a harsh and “traumatic” impact on girls in divided families. But an appeals court, made up mostly of judges appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, reinstated it last year. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case (Hodgson vs. Minnesota, 88-1125) on Nov. 29. Its decision probably will affect similar laws in 30 other states, including California.

For more than a decade, the justices have been closely split on whether such laws unfairly block teen-agers from choosing abortion or merely ensure that parents take part in their decision.

Last week the Florida Supreme Court, invoking the state constitution, struck down Florida’s parental consent law. On Thursday, a California appellate court in San Francisco issued an order preventing enforcement of a 1987 state law that forbids unmarried minors to get an abortion without the approval of a parent, guardian or judge.

The Justice Department brief is the first abortion pronouncement from its new solicitor general, Kenneth W. Starr.

Charles Fried, the Ronald Reagan Administration’s solicitor general, argued bluntly that the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling, which made abortion legal, should be repealed. Starr’s brief, less blustery and political in tone than Fried’s, offered the court’s conservative majority a series of approaches for limiting the abortion right without directly overruling it.

First, he urged the court to declare that the right to abortion is not “fundamental” but rather a lesser right that can yield to a “reasonable” state policy, such as Minnesota’s law applying to unwed teens. In the past, the court’s abortion-rights majority struck down as unconstitutional many state regulations, such as a required 24-hour waiting period, even if they merely infringed on the abortion right.

Second, Starr said that a parent’s right should prevail over those of a teen-ager. He urged the court to reverse a 1976 decision in which it said that parents cannot exercise “an absolute veto” over a teenager’s decision to end her pregnancy.

Finally, Starr suggested that the states should be given authority to protect “fetal life.” In the Roe decision, the court said that a state could act only to protect a woman’s health or well-being.

“The state’s interest in protecting fetal life through pregnancy provides an entirely adequate basis for limiting any right of privacy or procreative choice,” Starr said.