PARENTAL NOTIFICATION LAWS PASS IN TEXAS AND FLORIDA

By Dave Andrusko

June 10 - Just three days ago, pro-life Texas Gov. George W. Bush signed into law parental notification legislation that is virtually identical to a parental notification law that pro-life Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is scheduled to sign into law as NRL News goes to press.

Both laws overcame enormous obstacles, beginning with a barrage of pro-abortion parliamentary trickery and the brevity of the legislative session in both states.

At a bill-signing ceremony June 7, George W. Bush ex-pressed his desire for an America where "unborn children are welcome in life and protected by law."

Gov. Bush declared that the new law "makes a simple, urgent point: when a child is in crisis, parents should have a role and a voice. They should be the first to help, not the last to know." The law, Bush said, "both respects families and protects life."

In his remarks Gov. Bush also "asked state lawmakers to push for other antiabortion measures, including promoting adoption, opposing public funding of abortions, ending partial-birth abortion, and promoting abstinence among children," according to the Associated Press.

"It is a new day for Right to Life in Texas," said Joseph Graham, Ph.D., president of Texas Right to Life. "We have been working to pass meaningful pro-life legislation since 1973."

Dr. Graham said parental notification promotes a number of important goals. "It establishes protection for the unborn; by bringing in their parents, the law will help pregnant teens make a decision about something that will have an impact on them the rest of their lives," he told NRL News.

NRLC Associate Executive Director Darla St. Martin strongly agreed. "Gov. George W. Bush's strong pro-life leadership was critical in passing this legislation over pro-abortion opposition," she said. "Parents owe a debt of gratitude to Gov. Bush, the bill's sponsors, the Texas legislature, and the coalition of pro-life groups, including Texas Right to Life, who worked so hard for this protective legislation."

Mrs. St. Martin added, "Experi-ence shows that notification laws save babies' lives and strengthen the bonds between teenage daughters and their parents."

Mary Spaulding Balch, NRLC's state legislative director, told NRL News that the victories in Texas and Florida were "just short of miraculous."

"Historically, again and again pro-life legislation has been sabotaged by a determined pro-abortion minority using arcane parliamentary tricks," she said. "That happened in Texas in 1997 when at the last minute a pro-abortion state representative used a 'point of order' to kill a parental notification law."

Not so in 1999. (Texas's legislature meets only every other year for 140 days.) Despite a flurry of maneuvers that to the very end of the session threatened to either kill the bill altogether or produce a deeply flawed version, a strong parental notification measure emerged.

For instance, after losing the vote that would have allowed other relatives to be notified as well as a parent, one pro-abortionist offered an amendment that would have allowed minors to notify a clergyman. But Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth blasted the amendment, explaining that anyone can easily become "clergy."

"To prove her point, she logged on to a Web site while the House was in session and became a minister of the Universal Life Church," the American-Statesman reported.

Instead the strong new Texas law obligates abortionists to inform a parent of an unmarried girl under 18 by phone or registered mail 48 hours in advance. As required by a string of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the law provides a judicial bypass, whereby the minor may petition a judge to be given an abortion without notifying her parents. Over and over the High Court has shot down laws which do not include such a bypass mechanism.

The measure passed the Senate by a vote of 23-8 and the House 111-30, just two days before the end of the session. Polls by major newspapers had placed support for parental notice in Texas at 74%. That jumped to 80% by the time the bill hit the House floor.

In 1997, the last year for which numbers are available, 5,523 abortions performed on minors were reported to the Texas state health department.

Dr. Graham attended the bill signing in Dallas. Looking back at the session just completed, he told NRL News that "Gov. Bush showed himself to be an extremely effective leader on the pro-life issue." Graham said Bush made it abundantly clear that he wanted pro-life legislation throughout the session and at the May 15 Texas RTL fundraising luncheon that the governor attended.

"He went out of his way to make the point that the abortion issue is very dear to him and close to his heart," Graham said. The bill was stuck in a particular house committee, Graham said, and Bush was key to getting the legislation unbottled and on to the floor of the house.

Florida was equally happy with its pro-life governor. "Jeb Bush provided excellent leadership on this bill," said Florida RTL President Lynda Bell. "We could not be more pleased with a governor than we are with Jeb Bush."

Bell said the legislation "will make a tremendous difference." Everywhere such measures take effect, she observed, not only do fewer minors abort, but fewer minors become pregnant.

Like Texas's law, Florida's parental notification law re-quires that the abortionist contact a parent 48 hours before aborting a minor girl under 18. Florida's law includes the requisite judicial bypass provision.

At the last minute pro-lifers, who control both chambers, fought off a slew of some 20 amendments in the House. Bell said they understood had any been adopted, the result would have been to effectively kill the law since there was not time to send the bill back to the Senate for action before the session adjourned. (The session lasted only 60 days.)

Bell said that pro-lifers have had the votes to pass legislation in the last few years but not enough to override the veto of the late pro-abortion Gov. Lawton Chiles (D). All that changed when Republican Jeb Bush was elected in 1998.

Florida RTL's future plans include passage of a ban on partial-birth abortion, Bell told NRL News.

When the new laws in Texas and Florida take effect, there will be 24 parental notification or parental consent laws in force. Mary Spaulding Balch said these latest victories are very important.

"Texas and Florida are huge states," she explained. "There are many thousands of minor girls who become pregnant and abort without any input from their parents."

The new laws will open communication lines between parents and minor girls facing a life and death decision, Balch said. Passage also means that pregnant girls in nearby states that already have such laws will no longer be able to come to Texas or Florida to avoid telling their parents.

These breakthroughs are symptomatic of a larger trend: victories in states where pro-lifers had toiled virtually without success for over 20 years.

"It all comes down to changing the composition of the legislature and making sure the governor's mansion is occupied by a pro-lifer," Balch said.