Planned Parenthood files suit against Alaska parental notification law

by Kathleen Gilbert

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, November 26, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest (PPGW) is filing suit against a law approved by Alaska voters in August that would require parents to be notified of their minor daughter’s abortion.

The abortion giant, along with two pro-abortion medical doctors, is arguing that the law violates abortion-bound girls’ right to equal protection, because girls who choose to keep their babies are not required to tell their parents. The plaintiffs also claim the law, set to take effect December 14 of this year, violates abortionists’ due process rights.

Clover Simon, vice president of PPGW, said: “We really believe under the Alaska Constitution that minors really do have the same protection of privacy as an adult woman. And that this law, the way that it’s been written, has so many burdens on minors that it means they can’t adequately exercise that right.”

Alaska’s Department of Law is reviewing the complaint.

Supporters of parental restrictions on abortion have fought a long battle in the state. Legislation requiring parental consent for abortions was voted into law in 1997, but was stalled in the courts until state Supreme Court judges struck it down as interfering with a teenage girl’s “fundamental right to choose” to abort her child.

However, the head of the court at the time, Chief Justice Dana Fabe, indicated that a law requiring only parental notification would be constitutional. Jim Minnery of the Alaska Family Council told the Daily News he was expecting the pro-abortion Fabe, who remains an associate justice on the court, to keep her word.

After a parental notification bill stalled in the state Senate’s health committee in 2009, supporters turned to Alaska voters. Planned Parenthood had teamed up with the ACLU to fight the proposed law, known as Measure 2, on the August primary ballot, before voters upheld it 55 to 45 percent.

“It seems like every time that Planned Parenthood fails in the court of public opinion or in the Legislature they are going to go to the courts and see if they can push it through that way,” Minnery told the Daily News this week. “But we’re pretty confident.”

At least 35 states require either parental notification or consent in a minor’s decision to abort her child. In several states, such as Illinois, Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups have stalled such legislation in the courts for as long as several years.