New Chief Justice Faces Abortion Issue in Parental Notification Case

The first major abortion case since Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court last month comes before the justices next week. The case is Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood , No. 04-1144. and involves a New Hampshire law requiring teenagers to tell a parent before getting an abortion. While the law has an exception for girls who would die without the procedure, New Hampshire lawmakers omitted an exception for other non-life-threatening health problems because they felt it would render the law meaningless. The new law has never been enforced, because two federal courts have said the lack of a health exception made it unconstitutional. The Bush administration supports the New Hampshire law, telling the court in a friend-of-the-court brief that the case "may have direct relevance" to its defense of the federal law banning the late-term procedure that its opponents refer to as "partial-birth abortion" -- a law that has been struck down by lower federal courts in rulings that the administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn. Source: Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer, Washingtonpost.com. For more information, please click here (last visited November 26, 2005, reo).