Madigan Defends Parental Notification

[chicago]

suntimes.com/news/politics/220940,CST-NWS-abort20.article

On the books for more than a decade, a state law requiring parents be notified before minors can receive abortions moved a step closer to being enacted Friday, when Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan asked the federal courts to allow it to be enforced.

The Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995 has been stalled by the state Supreme Court’s refusal to spell out how a young woman could ask a judge for an exemption if she was the victim of incest or had other compelling reason not to want her parents told.

But last September, the state’s top court finally released such rules, and Madigan said that removed the last question of the dormant law’s constitutionality.

“As the chief legal officer of the State of Illinois, it is my duty to uphold the Constitution and to defend the laws of this state if they are constitutional,” Madigan said. “At this point, 44 states have parental involvement laws, and courts have upheld many parental notice laws that are similar to the act.”

Abortion opponents rejoiced at her move.

 

[urban-hermit]

Ok so let me get this straight: it took the state Supreme Court 11 years to rule on one provision of a case that was already 11 years old when they got their assignment.

How much money do these people make?

This is outrageous. Also, I was disturbed by the ACLU’s claim that the law is “harmful” and that the American Academy of Pediatrics agrees with them!

Here is what the American Academy of Pediatrics’ website says:
aap.org/research/periodicsurvey/peds3_93.htm
it is a very interesting article and shows that you parents out there better be discerning when choosing a pediatrician.

But I found that the ACLU’s claim is questionable at best: (from the above webpage)

Pediatricians’ views on parental notification of an adolescent’s intention to seek abortion are further specified in Table 3. Fifty-one percent of all pediatricians said there should not be laws mandating parental notification when an adolescent seeks an abortion; 48.8% said there should be such laws. With 95% confidence limits of approximately 3.6 percentage points on either side of these percentages, these results are ambiguous with regard to the view of the majority of pediatricians.

 

[chicago]

Ok so let me get this straight: it took the state Supreme Court 11 years to rule on one provision of a case that was already 11 years old when they got their assignment.

Allegedly, it has been (and still is in the case of their recent ruling) a political/ideological thing where the court intentionally tied things up in a kind of catch 22 (such that the court first said that the legislature had to provide court guided exceptions or something but then refused to provide guidelines for the exceptions when the legislature offerred what they initially asked for). So, basically, it left the legislation in legal limbo until they were finally pushed of late to rule on it for political reasons, again.

The most interesting irony in all of this is that Lisa is positioning herself as an upholder of the law when it is well known that she’s pretty vehemently pro-abort; to the point that she supposedly wanted to go after the crisis pregnancy centers and try to shut them down (ala the AG of NY) when she was first elected to this office 4 years ago.