From the Courthouse News Service:
The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that an initiative that would require parental notification for minors seeking abortions can appear on the August primary ballot, even though the petition summary left out key information.
In 2007 the state high court struck down the Parent Consent Act (PCA), which would have required girls under the age of 18 to get parental consent to have an abortion. The justices said the bill violated the girls’ privacy rights.
The current petition would require girls to notify their parents or guardians – if not gain their consent — before having an abortion. It was
Planned Parenthood of Alaska objected to the petition’s language in a lawsuit against Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, and the lower court agreed that the petition summary omitted crucial information.The state Supreme Court upheld this part of the ruling, saying the summary should have included the following information: the petition was a modification of the PCA; parental notification is currently not required; and doctors who perform abortions without parental consent could be jailed for up to five years.
“The type and severity of legal consequences a doctor might face could reasonably give a voter serious grounds for reflection,” the justices wrote.
But the court said the changes were not significant enough to warrant a recirculation of the petitions.
Here is a copy of the full court opinion/opinion order.
It is interesting that Associate Justice Dana Fabe joined in the majority in upholding the anti-abortion initiative here. As noted in the article above, in 2007, the Alaska Supreme Court struck down the a law that would have required minors to get parental consent prior to obtaining an abortion. See full opinion here. And, in fact, it was Justice Fabe who wrote the opinion for the court in that 3-2 decision.
Other than that, it’s a mess trying to compare heads between the two rulings. Since the 2007 ruling, there have been three replacements on the five-justice bench: Winfree, Christen, and Stowers. Moreover, Chief Justice Carpeneti, who wrote the dissent in the 2007 decision, did not participate in this decision (nor did Christen). I guess that means that the decision probably would have been the same had the full bench participated (Carpeneti to uphold, Christen unknown), but your guess is as good as mine.
