Enforcement delayed again on abortion law requiring minors to notify parents

It has been 14 years and it will be at least a few more months before Illinois' long-mothballed parental notification law for teens seeking abortions takes effect.

A Cook County Judge Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the law. That came after the state doctors' disciplinary board green-lighted the law over the objections of its own lawyer.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union, representing an abortion clinic, fought the law all the way through the federal court system and lost.

Now they argue that Illinois' constitution, which includes a right to privacy, grants even more abortion rights than the federal constitution, which has no explicit right to privacy.

An attorney for Illinois' abortion-rights-supporting attorney general, Lisa Madigan, who is charged with defending the law, said the writers of Illinois' 1970 constitution considered and rejected any laws recognizing or prohibiting a right to abortion. The state constitution is silent on the issue, Tom Ioppolo said.

But Judge Daniel Riley said he was persuaded enough by the ACLU's arguments that he put the law on hold to give them time to argue their case -- probably at least a few months.

"I find that the arguments of the plaintiffs do in fact raise a fair question of constitutionality," Riley said. He agreed that the Illinois State Constitution's explicit guarantee of the right to privacy could mean a different outcome than decisions reached in federal courts around the country that have upheld parental notification laws in most states.

By the count of the anti-abortion side, 44 states, including all the other states in the Midwest, have parental notification laws that have been upheld as constitutional. In 36 of those states, the law is enforced.

But ACLU Attorney Lorie Chaiten argued that even in states that have had the notification law for years, young girls can be "abused, kicked out of their homes and left homeless" by some less-than-understanding parents.

Illinois, like other states with the law, has adopted a "judicial by-pass" procedure that allows girls who think their parents will over-react to the news to go before a judge and ask for a waiver to the law. The courts' initial failure to set up a waiver procedure accounts for the first 10 years the law languished.

But now, the Cook County Circuit Court's website has the forms all set up, asking girls their age and their reason for seeking a waiver. They are assigned an attorney and given a hearing the morning after they file, said Patrick McGann, presiding judge of the court's county division.

Chaiten said she appreciated the court's efforts but argued that even well-run by-pass systems are flawed, delay abortions and risk the girls' confidentiality. One girl waiting for a hearing in Massachusetts saw her sister's civics class walk through the court house and she later had to explain to her parents what she was doing at the courthouse, Chaitan told the judge.

Anti-abortion activist Joe Scheidler said he was skeptical about that story and that when he brings nervous pregnant teens he has talked out of having abortions from abortion clinics to talk to their parents, the parents rise to the occasion and don't get angry.

These laws aren't about the majority of parents who will handle the situation with compassion, Chaiten said.

Earlier Wednesday, Illinois' Medical Disciplinary Board voted to begin enforcing the law. Doctors who perform abortions on minors without notifying parents are subject to discipline under the law, which apparently was in effect for a few hours until Riley issued his restraining order in the afternoon.

Here's the Cook County Circuit Court's form for judicial bypass of the parental notification law.