WASHINGTON — Both pro-life and pro-abortion activists were finding things to crow about in the unanimous Jan. 18 Supreme Court decision regarding a parental notification law.

But the U.S. Bishops’ spokeswoman on pro-life matters issued a word of caution in the wake of Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.

The case involved a 2003 New Hampshire law that prevented teens from having an abortion without the notification of a parent or guardian 48 hours beforehand. It permits an abortion without notification if the woman’s life is in danger.

The high court returned the case to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which had ruled the law unconstitutional because it does not allow abortions if a physician determines that one is needed to preserve a woman’s health.

The Supreme Court ruled that the problem could be corrected without tossing out the entire statute.

“We agree with New Hampshire that the lower courts need not have invalidated the law wholesale,” wrote retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in the court’s opinion. “Only a few applications of New Hampshire’s parental notification statute would present a constitutional problem. So long as they are faithful to legislative intent, then, in this case the lower courts can issue a declaratory judgment and an injunction prohibiting the statute’s unconstitutional application.”

The opinion said the lower court could address the concern about exceptions with either an injunction prohibiting some applications of the law or by finding that the Legislature’s intentions require that the whole statute be thrown out if it cannot be enacted as is.

But Roger Stenson, executive director of Citizens for Life, the New Hampshire affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee, saw the court’s ruling as a significant victory.

“The court reaffirmed that parents have a right to know and be involved in their children’s lives,” Stenson said.

New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said she feels that the Parental Notification Act can survive the lower court with some modification.

“The court’s opinion respects the New Hampshire Legislature’s authority to adopt parental notification laws. The court also recognizes, as we argued, that the act must be applied in a manner to protect minors in emergency situations,” said Ayotte immediately after the ruling. “We look forward to addressing this case before the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. We believe the 1st Circuit can craft a narrow injunction that would adequately address emergency cases, while allowing New Hampshire’s Parental Notification Act to be effective.”

Pro-abortion groups also applauded the ruling.

“The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood Federation of America welcomed today’s decision,” said Planned Parenthood in a press release.

“Today’s decision tells politicians that they cannot jeopardize women’s health” when they pass laws restricting abortion, said Jennifer Dalven, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project and the attorney who argued the case before the high court. “The New Hampshire Legislature intentionally omitted a medical emergency exception when it passed this law. We continue to believe that the lower court will recognize this and strike down the law in its entirety.

But Deirdre McQuade, director of planning and information for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, feels that some of the positive reactions by pro-life organizations might result from misunderstanding the case.

“They are seeing it as affirming the law,” said McQuade, noting that that is not necessarily the case.

“In Ayotte, the Supreme Court returns the challenge to New Hampshire’s parental notification law back to the district court without answering major questions posed in the case,” she said. “The lower court, appropriately, was told it should not have preemptively invalidated an entire abortion regulation on the basis of a potentially unconstitutional application to a small number of hypothetical cases.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean victory,” she said. “It was a decision not to decide.”

McQuade complained that the Court “missed an opportunity to address the substantive legal questions raised in Ayotte, and we are left with more questions than answers — especially with regard to the so-called health exception first established 33 years ago in Doe v. Bolton.”

The danger, she said, is how the word “emergency” is defined.

“If ‘emergency’ comes to be interpreted as broadly as ‘health,’ the requirement to have parental notification would be completely emptied of its power,” said McQuade.

Pro-life organizations point to the existence of similar laws in other states as a reason for hope. Forty-four states have parental notification or consent laws that are intact. Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood is not the first case to have reached the Supreme Court.

In 1990, the Supreme Court upheld Minnesota’s notification law. Virginia’s 1997 notification law was upheld unanimously in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1999, the Supreme Court decided not to review the case, in effect declaring the law to be constitutional.

Effective Law?

There has been much debate over the effectiveness of such laws.

According to the Redondo Beach, Calif.-based Pro-Life America, the number of legal teenage abortions in Minnesota was reduced by 25% after consent laws were introduced. Similar statistics have shown decreases in abortion in Mississippi and Virginia. The abortion rate in Virginia dropped approximately 20% during the first five months after the law went into effect.

Opponents argue that much of Virginia’s decrease was due to teens traveling to nearby Washington, which does not have a consent law.

Regardless of the statistics, McQuade described such laws as a “very good thing.”

“The people who are voting for those laws are able to have their values expressed where they live,” said McQuade. “Such laws make abortion less thinkable, less desirable, and less necessary. The law also teaches, so that if people know that it’s unavailable, to sneak across state borders adds another moral barrier.”

Despite the unresolved questions, McQuade said that the court’s decision in Ayotte provides reason for hope.

“Subtle changes in jurisprudence can help us to chip away at the holds that Roe has on our country,” said McQuade. “Laws that people have made can remain in place and can be built upon.”

CNS contributed to this report.

Tim Drake is based

in Saint Joseph, Minnesota.