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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Supreme Court declines to hear case challenging parental consent for | |
abortion | |
By John Fritze, CNN | |
Updated: | |
10:46 AM EDT, Thu July 3, 2025 | |
Source: CNN | |
The Supreme Court declined Thursday to review a Montana law that | |
requires people under 18 to seek parental consent before obtaining an | |
abortion, leaving in place a state court ruling that struck the law | |
down. | |
Montana’s law, enacted in 2013, prohibits a doctor from providing an | |
abortion to a patient under 18 without notarized written consent from a | |
parent. | |
The state’s highest court had concluded that the law violated the | |
Montana state constitution, which includes broader protections for | |
abortion than the US Constitution. | |
The Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning, but conservative | |
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wrote a short statement | |
asserting that technical problems with the case made it a “poor | |
vehicle” for deciding the questions over such laws and that it was | |
“especially important” that the denial not be read as a | |
“rejection of the argument” the appeal raised. | |
“Parents’ authority extends to decisions about medical care,” | |
Montana officials told the Supreme Court in their appeal, filed in | |
January. “Because parents are presumed to act in their child’s best | |
interest, the state may not ‘inject itself into the private realm of | |
the family [and] question the ability of that parent to make the best | |
decisions concerning the rearing of [their] children’ unless it has a | |
reason to believe the parent is unfit.” | |
Planned Parenthood, which sued over the law, argued that the case is | |
primarily about the state constitution. | |
Montana officials “seem to suggest that the existence of parental | |
rights is the beginning and end of the inquiry – that so long as | |
there is a federal due process right of parents to participate in | |
decisions concerning their minor child’s medical care, there is no | |
need to consider what other rights might be in play,” lawyers for | |
Planned Parenthood said. | |
Under Montana’s law, which never went into effect, a doctor | |
performing an abortion without parental consent would face both fines | |
and imprisonment. | |
The law requires physicians to obtain notarized consent from a parent | |
or guardian for anyone under 18. The law also allows a minor to | |
“bypass” the requirement by convincing a court they are mature and | |
well informed enough to make the decision on their own. | |
The Supreme Court dealt with a similar issue in the 1970s, a few years | |
after it issued its decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973. In Planned | |
Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, a majority of the court | |
struck down similar consent requirements, relying in part on the | |
constitutional right to abortion established by Roe. In a 1979 case, | |
the court struck down a Massachusetts law because it did not include a | |
path for a patient under 18 to “bypass” the parental consent | |
requirement through a court. | |
Montana has argued in part that the Supreme Court’s decision | |
strengthened its justification for the law, partly because state courts | |
found a similar right to abortion in Montana’s constitution that Roe | |
found in the US Constitution. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health | |
Organization, the Supreme Court said that Roe’s reasoning was | |
“egregiously wrong.” | |
The state supreme court’s ruling “flouted … longstanding | |
principles” of parental rights, Montana argued in its appeal to the | |
US Supreme Court, holding “that parents’ federal fundamental rights | |
do not include the right to know about and participate in their minor | |
child’s important medical decisions – at least not with the | |
child’s decision whether to get an abortion.” | |
In its decision, the state court concluded that “minors, like adults, | |
have a fundamental right to privacy, which includes procreative | |
autonomy and making medical decisions affecting his or her bodily | |
integrity and health in partnership with a chosen health care provider | |
free from governmental interest.” | |
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