How a Law That Sounds OK on Paper Killed a Girl

At the funeral, Becky Bell’s big brother held his parents’ hands and asked if he could close his sister’s casket. He stroked Becky’s golden hair. “Beck,” he whispered, “nobody will ever hurt you again.”

“Then he closed the lid,” Karen Bell said. “And Bill and I went home and died.”

A couple months after Bill and Karen Bell buried their 17-year-old daughter, they received a letter from a producer for ABC’s evening news requesting an interview.

“Your daughter,” wrote the producer, “is the first known teenager to die because of a parental consent law.”

The Bells live in Indiana, which requires minors to get permission from a parent or a judge before obtaining an abortion. Becky did neither. Instead, in September 1988, she sought an illegal abortion and died a week later of a massive infection.

“So I turned to Bill,” Karen said, “and said, ‘What is parental consent?’ ”

California’s young women will know soon enough.

Ten days ago, a closely divided California Supreme Court upheld a never-enforced 1987 law requiring minors to receive the consent of a parent before obtaining an abortion.

The law, argued its opponents (a coalition of health professionals, women’s rights advocates and civil libertarians), is an unconstitutional invasion of the privacy rights of minors, particularly since they are not required to obtain parental consent to carry a pregnancy to term.

Justice Stanley Mosk, writing for the 4-3 majority, dismissed that view. Minors are not entitled to the same privacy protections as adults, he wrote, and besides, the law advances a “compelling purpose” of the state: to “promote the physical and emotional welfare of children.”

In addition, Mosk wrote, because the law contains a provision that would allow a minor who cannot or will not seek parental consent to petition a judge for permission, it does not impede the ability of a mature minor to obtain an abortion, rather it facilitates it.

Mosk’s logic is stunning in its ignorance, his language Orwellian in its deception.

Both sides of the abortion debate agree that most girls tell a parent about a pregnancy. So how does attempting to force communication by legal fiat promote the welfare of a child who can’t or won’t? Sure, she can turn to a judge, but what teenager is going to feel comfortable or safe taking news of a pregnancy to court? Why should the decision about a minor’s ability to give informed consent be wrenched from physicians and handed to judges?

The law requires judges to ensure a girl’s privacy when she appears in court, but who can assure her of that? Girls might be anonymous in the courthouses of our big cities, but what about the small towns?

And how does a legal roadblock like a court hearing facilitate a minor’s right to end a pregnancy?

It may be worth noting that the two women who sit on the California Supreme Court dissented. And since the composition of the court has changed since the case was argued, pro-choice forces are guardedly optimistic about chances for a rehearing.

The Bells were deeply disappointed by the California decision. And they do understand why parental consent laws seem, on the surface, to be good public policy. Had they even known such a law existed when Becky got pregnant, they would have embraced it.

“The law sounds so good and I would have thought just in case she didn’t come to me on her own, that would make her,” Karen said.

After all, the Bells were loving and close. When Becky was 16 1/2, she confessed she had a drug problem and asked her parents for help. They were stunned, Karen said, because until then, Becky was “flutes and poetry and played in the band. We called her the angel.”

But they enrolled her in a 3-month rehab program. “And Bill and I both said don’t ever disappoint us like this again.”

She didn’t.

Instead, the Bells’ angel took matters into her own hands. According to the autopsy, performed by a forensic pathologist at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, Rebecca Suzanne Bell died of a “septic abortion with pneumonia.”

It’s hard to believe that in 1988, a young woman would risk her life to avoid disappointing the people she loved most. But a certain kind of responsibility can do that to you.

I think I know how Becky Bell felt.

In 1972, the year I became student body president and editor of the yearbook, the year before I graduated with straight A’s and went off to college, I discovered I was pregnant. There were two things I was sure of: I would never tell my parents and I would end the pregnancy.

The abortion grapevine at my school hummed loud and clear: agencies, phone numbers, addresses. Had I been forced into court to obtain an abortion, I can’t begin to know if I’d have had the courage. Judges are authority figures of the highest order. Girls like me were in the business of impressing authority figures, not letting them down.

This law is not about anyone’s health or welfare. It’s about the inexorable chip, chip, chipping away of reproductive rights.

Girls who can tell their parents already do.

Girls who can’t will be forced to lobby a stranger.

And girls like Becky Bell?

Tough luck, says the court. They’ll just have to take their chances.

* Robin Abcarian’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.