GOP Acts to Curb Teen Access to Abortions

Every year thousands of pregnant teenagers slip quietly across state lines to have abortions. And the effect--if not necessarily the intent--is frequently to evade state laws at home that require the consent of one or both parents before the operation may be performed.

More than 20 states have such laws, and Republican congressional leaders, under pressure from conservative family groups, have vowed to put on the fast track a bill designed to make it harder for girls to escape them.

The legislation would make it a federal crime for anyone to transport a girl younger than 18 across state lines to have an abortion if she has not satisfied her state’s parental consent law.

The measure would not make it illegal for the girl herself to cross state lines. But if the measure is enacted, it would continue the national trend of making abortions more difficult for young women to obtain.

Already, the bill is raising unexplored constitutional questions about how to balance a woman’s right to an abortion against a parent’s right to control a daughter’s life.

On the one hand, most Americans agree that girls who are not yet finished with high school are too young to become mothers. Yet, the public also broadly supports legal barriers to teenagers’ freedom to have abortions. The public particularly sympathizes with parental consent laws--a fact that Republican lawmakers had in mind when they announced their drive to pass the legislation before Congress recesses in August.

“There may be disagreement on the subject of abortion,” said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). “But it is simply intolerable that a young girl can be taken away from her home, out of state, to have an abortion without her parents knowing about it.”

Pennsylvania Case Sparked Measure

The legislation grew out of a Pennsylvania case in which a 13-year-old from a rural county in the central part of the state became pregnant by her 18-year-old boyfriend. Although she did not want to tell her mother, she discussed it with her 15-year-old sister, her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s older sister, who helped her make an appointment to have the pregnancy terminated at a clinic in rural New York.

Many clinics in states bordering Pennsylvania advertise their services there, noting that their states either have no parental involvement laws (New York and New Jersey) or a much milder one (Delaware).

Joyce Farley, the girl’s mother, found a note on her daughter’s bed one morning saying that she had gone away. Surprised, she called her daughter’s friends and, by the end of the day, had learned that her daughter had gone to New York. The boyfriend’s mother had driven the pregnant girl to an abortion clinic, at first pretending to be the girl’s stepmother, and then paid for the abortion with money given to her by her son.

“My child was provided alcohol, raped and then taken out of state by a stranger to have an abortion,” Farley told a congressional hearing last week. “My daughter, who just turned 13, underwent a dangerous medical procedure without anyone present who knew her past medical history.”

The county attorney pressed charges against the boyfriend’s mother, accusing her of violating a child custody law, and a jury found her guilty. The boyfriend pleaded guilty to statutory rape.

If the prohibition on transporting minors across state lines to have abortions were law, it would almost certainly be challenged on constitutional grounds. Restrictions on abortion must not impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to an abortion, according to the U.S. Supreme Court. Abortion rights advocates say that the legislation could not meet that test.

They also say that the proposal raises constitutional concerns both about a person’s freedom to travel and about the extension of one state’s abortion laws into the jurisdiction of another.

Scholars See Outcome in Doubt

Antiabortion activists counter that the measure is comparable to other long-standing laws that prohibit interstate commerce--prostitution, for example--that is harmful to minors and their families.

In fact, constitutional scholars say that judges could come down on either side.

“It involves the intersection of [constitutional principles] concerning parental control over minors with abortion rights and with the principles of federal-state relations,” said Lawrence Tribe, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard University.

However, Douglas Kmiec, a conservative legal scholar who oversaw constitutional questions for the Justice Department under President Reagan, said he finds no problem with the legislation.

“I would think there would be little constitutional difficulty with it. Something that has long been somewhat dormant in the law is the implicit constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children . . ,’ Kmiec said. “It [was] recognized by the court in the 1920s, but it has not had much play in the modern court.”

Even if enacted and found constitutional, the measure’s impact would be uncertain. An estimated 124,000 girls under 18 had abortions in 1994, the last year for which there are complete statistics, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. How many of those had their operations in states other than where they live is unknown.

Thirty-one states (but not California) enforce laws requiring an adult to be involved in a teenager’s decision to have an abortion.

Of those, 22 states require women younger than 18--or in some cases younger than 16--to tell at least one parent or grandparent before getting an abortion. And four states require the involvement of both parents. All of them allow girls to go to a judge for a waiver of the parental consent requirement.

Clinics Do Business Near State Lines

Many abortion clinics are near state lines and have many out-of-state clients, although no one knows how many are teenagers. Among the states that attract the most business from out of state are North Dakota, Delaware, Kansas and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.

Abortion clinic operators say they believe women would find their way to the clinics regardless of the obstacles. Making it illegal for someone to drive girls across state lines, they say, would merely make the trip less safe.

“Virtually nothing stops a woman of any age from getting an abortion when she has her mind set,” said Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which operates 147 clinics that perform abortions.

Furthermore, doctors typically advise abortion patients to have someone accompany them because many of them are sedated and experience bleeding and cramping after the operation.

“To burden a vulnerable young woman with the mental anguish that would go along with not having a supportive adult with her is hard to even calculate,” Feldt said.

Critics of the legislation argue that it would impose a particular burden on girls from broken or dysfunctional families because it would make it illegal even for relatives other than parents to take them to abortion clinics.

“What happens if the young woman goes to her grandmother and says, ‘Grandmother, please help me.’ Does that grandmother go to jail?” asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

Pennsylvania Atty. Gen. Mike Fisher, a strong antiabortion advocate, acknowledged: “In cases like this, prosecutors have difficult decisions.”

Studies of parental involvement statutes show that, while they may change where girls get their abortions, they have little effect on whether they get them.

After Mississippi required the involvement of both parents in a teenager’s abortion decision, fewer minors had abortions within the state--but considerably more went to neighboring states.

The same trend has been reported elsewhere.

Amy Shriefer, who answers the abortion hotline run by the Washington-based National Abortion Federation, said: “I just got a call from Virginia from a girl saying: ‘How do I get to Washington? How do I get on the bus? What do I do when I get to the bus station? How do I get to the Metro?’ ”

Strong Backing Among Lawmakers

Regardless of the effect on pregnant teens, legislation to help states enforce their parental involvement laws commands substantial support in Congress.

Lawmakers are aware that, according to surveys by the Gallup Organization, voters give approval ratings of 70% and higher to measures aimed at restricting girls’ access to abortions.

“Think about the personal affront this is to the parent-child relationship,” said Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the lead sponsor of the House bill to discourage girls from obtaining out-of-state abortions.

On the other side of the issue, Democrats favoring abortion rights have not leaped to the podium to decry the legislation.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, while noncommittal about his own position, acknowledged that it could sweep through Congress much like the ban on so-called partial-birth abortions.

President Clinton also has not taken a position on the legislation. A strong supporter of parental involvement in minors’ abortion decisions, he signed a law requiring such involvement when he was governor of Arkansas.