NARAL Pro-Choice America Files Brief In Case Challenging New Hampshire Parental Notification Law

NARAL Pro-Choice America on Monday filed a friend-of-the-court brief with U.S. District Judge Joseph DiClerico in a case involving a New Hampshire parental notification law saying that state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R) essentially is asking the judge to rewrite the law -- a function that the group says should be left to the state Legislature, the AP/Manchester Union Leader reports (Webster, AP/Manchester Union Leader, 10/4). The law requires physicians in the state to notify by certified letter a parent or guardian of a minor who is seeking an abortion at least 48 hours before performing the procedure. Parents are barred from forbidding the procedure, and the notification requirement could be bypassed by a judge if a doctor determines that the minor's life is in danger.

Case Background
Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Concord Feminist Health Center, the Feminist Health Center of Portsmouth, N.H., and Manchester, N.H.-based ob-gyn Wayne Goldner in November 2003 filed the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law. DiClerico and the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently struck down the entire law. Ayotte appealed the lower courts' ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying that the judicial bypass clause in the measure, combined with other state laws that allow doctors to act in an emergency, protect a woman's health. The Supreme Court in January unanimously ruled that the lower courts should not have invalidated the entire measure and ordered lower courts to review the legislative intent regarding exceptions to the law for medical emergencies (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 1/19).

Ayotte, NARAL Briefs
Ayotte's office in court briefs said, "The legislative goal of promoting parental involvement and protecting minors would be better served by a notification statute" with exceptions "in any circumstance where a doctor, in good faith, believes that there is a medical court emergency." NARAL Pro-Choice America in its brief said that "[a]lthough it may seem counterintuitive, the New Hampshire Legislature probably would have preferred no parental involvement law at all to one with a health exception." Ayotte's office has until mid-November to respond to briefs filed by Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. According to the AP/Union Leader, DiClerico is not expected to rule whether to allow enforcement of the law except when the pregnant women's health is at risk or bar enforcement of the entire measure until after the November elections (AP/Manchester Union Leader, 10/4).

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