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Parental notice law still in limbo

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Illinois

* Just about every major bill passed by the Republican legislative majority early in the 1995 session has been struck down by the courts. And the parental notification law has been in limbo ever since…

An unenforced 1995 law that requires physicians to notify a minor’s parent or guardian before performing an abortion should be returned to Cook County Circuit Court to determine its constitutionality, a state appeals court ruled Friday.

“Today’s ruling is extremely significant,” said Lorie A. Chaiten, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois’ Reproductive Rights Project, which represented a Granite City abortion clinic and University of Illinois at Chicago physician in challenging the law.

“The court’s decision recognizes that there are serious constitutional issues raised by the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act and permits our clients to return to the circuit court to present our strong case showing that the act threatens the health and well-being of young women,” Chaiten said.

Abortion-rights advocates turned to the state courts after a federal appeals panel ruled in August 2009 that the Illinois law did not run afoul of the U.S. Constitution. But after that, a Cook County circuit judge refused to permit the lawsuit since the federal courts already had weighed in, prompting the ACLU appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court.

The state appeals court ruling reverses the circuit court decision that lifted a restraining order barring implementation of the law, which was a GOP legislative centerpiece when Republicans last controlled both the Legislature and governor’s office in the mid-1990s.

As of Friday, the attorney general’s office had no comment.

* Click here to read the decision.

* Meanwhile…

Health care providers are failing to detail abortion complications to the state as required by law, one of many gaps in a surveillance system viewed as crucial to protecting patients, a Tribune review has found.

The state’s system for tracking abortions is so broken that regulators also may be missing more than 7,000 of the procedures per year. […]

• This reporting is the only tool Illinois authorities have to monitor some abortion providers, yet regulators may be allowing doctors and clinics to operate off the books. Regulators collect reports from 26 providers, but the abortion rights research group [Guttmacher Institute] has identified 37 providers doing business in the state.

• Also unknown to officials are the types of abortion-related problems experienced by women. Nearly 4,000 reports of abortion complications involving Illinois residents in 2009 were missing the required description.

• Health care providers who intentionally fail to submit accurate and complete reports are committing a criminal act, and a failure to report abortion complications is grounds for revoking their licenses, but the Department of Public Health has never sought disciplinary action against a provider.

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 1:03 pm

Comments

‘Safe, legal, and rare’, pick any two…..

Comment by Happy Returns Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 1:21 pm
“Just about every major bill passed by the Republican legislative majority early in the 1995 session has been struck down by the courts.”

That’s really interesting. You should devote some space to a review of what they passed and what got overturned.

Comment by L.S. Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 1:30 pm
===You should devote some space to a review of what they passed and what got overturned. ===

I did. Ten years ago. lol

Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 1:31 pm
The Cook County Board of Review law has not been challenged, has it?

Comment by Cal Skinner Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 1:42 pm
Was that a “fast track” bill, Cal? The only one that I remember surviving was the Scaffolding Act repeal.

Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 1:43 pm
If a “federal appeals panel” did not take issue with the bill’s Constitutionality, then why on earth is a County court investigating the matter?

Comment by GoldCoastConservative Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 2:21 pm
Don’t remember the fast track legislation, but certainly putting Cook County under the State Property Tax Appeal Board was a significant reform. It gave Cook County property owners the same rights to appeal above the county level that the other 101 counties have had since at least 1970.

Still law as far as I know.

Comment by Cal Skinner Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 2:24 pm
GoldCoastConservative,

Two different Constitutions. The federal court only ruled on the constitutionality of the law vis-a-vis the federal constitution. The state court can still rule the law violates the state’s Constitution.

Comment by Demoralized Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 2:40 pm
Just about every major bill passed by the Republican legislative majority early in the 1995 session has been struck down by the courts.

Yeah because we all know what impartial non political geniuses work in Illinois courts. What cannot be done in a campaign can be thrown out or overwritten in a court room if you have the right judges, right?

What is happening here is that we are seeing the limit that a court can rewrite a law, so the Party that did not want the law just ignores the law and doesn’t enforce it. Damn the voters, what do they know?

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 9:13 pm