Abortion ruling to get review

The US Supreme Court, wading again into the highly charged debate over abortion, agreed yesterday to review a New Hampshire law that would require parents to be notified if a girl under 18 intends to terminate her pregnancy.

The high court, the subject of intense speculation about potential vacancies and appointments by President Bush, said it will review a lower court ruling that struck down the state's parental notification law, which had been slated to take effect Dec. 31, 2003. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said the law was unconstitutional because it did not make an exception to protect a minor's health in the event of a medical emergency.

The last time the Supreme Court issued a major ruling in an abortion case was in 2000, when it decided, 5-4, that state abortion laws must provide an exception to protect the mother's health. The ruling struck down a Nebraska law banning so-called partial birth abortions.

Yesterday's announcement came amid widespread speculation about the possible retirement of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is being treated for thyroid cancer, and as Senate moderates reached a compromise on allowing votes to go ahead on some of the president's stalled judicial nominees.

No issue is more crucial to many conservatives and liberals than how nominees to the federal bench would rule on abortion rights. Proponents of the New Hampshire notification law exulted in the news that the high court will hear arguments in the term that begins in October.

''I'm still five feet off the ground," said Phyllis Woods, a former state representative from Dover, N.H., who cosponsored the bill and filed a friend-of-the-court brief with current and past lawmakers. ''We knew that when we passed the law in New Hampshire it was going to be challenged . . . But we wrote it so that it would be upheld by the Supreme Court."

The law passed after socially conservative Republicans in New Hampshire, renowned for its heritage of limited government, swept elective offices in 2002, capturing the governor's office, winning a US Senate seat, and increasing their presence in the Legislature.

Critics of the law contend that, since the Supreme Court in 1992 reaffirmed the constitutional right to an abortion, no federal appeals court has upheld a parental-notice or parental-consent law that lacked an exception to protect a girl's health. In that ruling, the court said abortion laws that impose an ''undue burden" do not pass constitutional muster.

Just three justices -- Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas -- are likely to support a law that doesn't make allowances for medical emergencies, said Paul Finkelman, a constitutional law specialist at the University of Tulsa College of Law. ''It seems obviously unconstitutional because of the lack of an exception," he said.

The New Hampshire law requires physicians to notify parents or guardians at least 48 hours before they perform an abortion on girls under 18. The vast majority of states, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, require parental notification or consent for minors seeking abortions. But almost all make an exception if a woman's health is at risk, according to Jennifer Dalven, deputy director of the national ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. The ACLU represents a group of New Hampshire medical providers, including Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, that filed a lawsuit challenging the law.

The New Hampshire law does make an exception, Dalven said, but only if death is imminent. If a pregnant teen faces less catastrophic medical problems unless she has an abortion -- such as bleeding, infection, or complications that could result in infertility -- she must still wait until her parents are notified. A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood said when the suit was filed that ''far from protecting teens, this law actually endangers the health and lives of young women."

But Woods, the former state legislator, said that if a pregnant teen seeking an abortion has a medical emergency, it makes even more sense for the state to require that her parents be notified.

''The only reason that I can imagine that anyone would fight this [law] would be because they want to protect the so-called right of an abortion provider to provide secret abortions and be totally unaccountable to families," she said.