New Hampshire House Kills Effort to Save Parental Notification Abortion Law

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 7, 2007   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

New Hampshire House Kills Effort to Save Parental Notification Abortion Law Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 7
, 2007

Concord, NH (LifeNews.com) — New Hampshire state legislators defeated an effort by pro-life lawmakers to salvage the state’s parental notification law. The statue has never been enforced and went all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld it in part, but abortion advocates are moving a measure that would take it off the books.

The current law requires telling at least one parent 48 hours before the abortion practitioner can do the abortion on the minor girl.

It was enacted in 2003 but abortion advocates including Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, the ACLU and two abortion businesses, filed suit against it. They claimed the law needed a health exception to allow teenagers to get a judicial waiver in emergency cases when parents supposedly couldn’t be told.

The law ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court last year and it ruled that lower courts should have just ruled certain parts of it unconstitutional and let the rest stand.

However, led by State Rep. Elizabeth Hager, a Republican, pro-abortion lawmakers are trying to take the law off the books entirely.

Rep. Fran Wendelboe, sponsored an amendment to that repealer bill to salvage the notification law and fix the issues the courts wanted addressed. But, legislators defeated the amendment 213-135.

"It is not a test of how pro-choice or pro-life you are: It is a parental rights issue," Wendelboe said before the vote, according to NBS News in Boston. "You can’t get a tattoo, or get your ears pierced, you can’t smoke, you can’t ride a bicycle under 16 without a helmet because the state knows better."

Should the legislature get the repeal bill to his desk, Democratic Gov. John Lynch said he will sign it.

Lynch press secretary Colin Manning said the governor feels “current law fails to protect the health and safety of all women. If a bill repealing this flawed law were to reach the governor’s desk, he would sign it.”

Related web sites:
New Hampshire legislature – https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us