Judging teenagers: How minors fare when they seek court-authorized abortions.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a state may require an unmarried minor who seeks an abortion to notify or obtain the consent of her parents, provided that if she does not wish to do so, she must be able to obtain permission from a judge. The judge's authorization is to be based on a determination either that the minor is mature enough to make her own decision or that it is in the minor's best interest to have the abortion without informing her parents. The Court has also stated that this judicial alternative must be expeditious, so that the minor may have a realistic opportunity to obtain an abortion, and that the judicial proceedings must protect the anonymity of the minor. (1)

Massachusetts, Minnesota and Rhode Island are among the states that have enacted parental consent or notification laws for abortion and have put into place "judical bypass" mechanisms that conform to the framework set out by the Court. (*) Since the spring of 1981, when the Massachusetts law began to be enforced, a total of 3,101 minors have gone to court in that state and in Minnesota and Rhode Island. Interviews that the author has conducted with nearly two dozen judges, public defenders, private attorneys, guardians ad litem, (+) and abortion providers and counselors in the three states indicate that although the judicial bypass laws and procedures there may appear reasonable and workable on paper, in practice they constitute a serious, and in some cases insurmountable, barrier confronting minors who wish to obtain abortions.

Consider the following:

* In Minnesota, virtually all of the abortion petitions filed by minors are heard by judges in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth, although each of the state's 87 counties have courts with jurisdiction over these cases. (#) The judges in most of these counties refuse, for either moral or political reasons, to carry out their obligation to implement the law. As a result, many minors who want to go to court are faced with having to make a round trip of 500 miles or more. For minors who cannot make the necessary travel arrangements, the option of going to court is effectively lost.

* A number of judges in Massachusetts also refuse to handle abortion petitions. In addition, some of the judges who do handle these cases focus-inappropriately--on the morality of abortion or are insulting or rude to the minor and her attorney. Lawyers make every effort to avoid these judges, even if it means taking the minor to another county, but it is not always possible to do so.

* No courts in Massachusetts, Minnesota or Rhode Island are open in the evening or on weekends, times when minors could more easily be away from home without arousing their parents' suspicions and when they would not have to explain absences from school. Furthermore, despite requirements in these laws that abortion petitions be handled expeditiously, a 2-4-day wait for a hearing is routine, and in Massachusetts, the delay has sometimes been as long as seven days. In the majority of these cases, moreover, it is not possible for a minor to go to court and have the abortion on the same day; as a result, she must arrange to be away from home or school at least twice, and frequently three times if she needs to obtain a pregnancy test prior to her court appearance.

* The overwhelming majority of minors who go to court are white, a pattern that raises questions about what is happening to minority teenagers who are faced with unintended pregnancies. In Minnesota, most of the minors who appear in court are reported to he from middle-class and upper class suburban families; minors who are poor or who live in the rural areas of this largely rural state apparently are not able to take advantage of the judicial bypass.