Brief Argues Abortionists Cannot Represent Pregnant Minors In Challenge
 to New Hampshire Parental Notice Law  

 Abortion providers who brought suit to strike down a New Hampshire statute requiring parental notice prior to abortion cannot claim the minors' right to abortion in arguing against the law, according the amicus brief filed by the Horatio R. Storer Foundation filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, August 8, 2005.  The brief argues that abortion providers lack standing to sue against the law because minors are presumed unable to make their own decisions on abortion and abortion providers have a conflict of interest when it comes to the outcome of a minors' decision whether to have an abortion or give birth.  Because no minor filed suit against the New Hampshire law, the Storer brief argues that much of the case brought by the abortion providers must be dismissed.

In the case, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England v. Ayotte, No. 04-4411, suit was brought by the sponsors of two abortion clinics and an abortion doctor against a New Hampshire law that requires 48 hours parental notice before an abortion can be performed on a minor.  In lieu of parental notice, the law provides for a court hearing in which it is decided either whether a minor is mature enough to make her own decision or, if she is not, then whether it is in her best interests to have the abortion and in her best interests or notify her parents.  Claiming to represent minor patients, the abortion providers argue that the law violated the abortion rights of minors.

"The Constitution requires those who attack laws in court on behalf of another person  have to fit in the other person's shoes," said James Bopp, Jr., General Counsel of the Horatio R. Storer Foundation, Inc., an educational foundation of the National Right to Life Committee.  "The problem here is that abortionists seek to represent minors to attack a statute that helps decide whether the minors can actually decide for abortion in the first place.," said Bopp.  "Abortion providers shouldn't be allowed to represent their minor patients to get abortions as though abortion were the only thing that a minor would ever choose."

Bopp noted that the abortion providers' case would have to be dismissed against at least some of the provisions of the New Hampshire law if the Supreme Court agreed with the Storer argument.  "They'll have no basis to complain that the law doesn't keep the abortion secret from parents well enough or that it doesn't have a blanket exception to allow  them to perform  abortion on minor girls any time they think there is some health reason to do so without involvement of anyone else, whether parent or court," said Bopp.