Illinois has discovered that changing abortion laws can be as complicated as it is controversial.
In 1995, the Illinois legislature passed a law intending for parents to be notified if their under-aged daughter was seeking to have an abortion. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Jim Edgar (GOP) and allowed for several exceptions to the notification requirement.
But it has taken 14 years for the law to go into effect due to the intense controversy and legal complexities involving the issue of abortion.
For decades, abortion law was purely a state issue. Before the landmark case of Roe v. Wade (1973) most states—including Illinois--banned abortion while just a few allowed abortions with certain regulations.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade forever changed abortion law because the Court mandated that abortions in the first trimester of a pregnancy be made legal in all 50 states.
The majority claimed that a woman’s ability to seek a medical procedure from her doctor was protected by an implied right to privacy in the Bill of Rights. Opponents of the decision claimed the Court used judicial activism to alter social policy through a judicial edict not by the legislative process.
Since then some states, like Illinois and New York, established very few barriers to the right of women to seek an abortion during a pregnancy. Other states tried to place extra regulations on the practice of abortion including requirements for parental notification and parental consent when a minor is seeking to have an abortion.
As supporters of the parental notification law discovered in Illinois, any attempt to add new restrictions on abortion are met with a whole host of legal barriers.
Implementation of Illinois’s notification law was delayed for more than 10 years because of the Illinois State Supreme Court. This Court refused to detail the how a minor could seek exemptions from the notification rule. But three years ago, the State Supreme Court decided to detail how a minor could waive the notification rule including if she was the victim of abuse.
Even though the law would not allow parents to block an abortion, Federal courts placed an injunction on the implementation of the law due to questions about its constitutionality.
That injunction expired this fall, but the issue hasn’t been officially settled. The law is set to be implemented only after an Illinois board approves final details of how the law will be enforced.
So the law’s 14 year legal journey, a process very indicative of the complexities regarding the abortion issue, will wait at least a few more days.
