House Committee Approves Minors' Interstate Abortion Travel Bill
Originally published by Reuters Health, March 21, 2002
WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) — For the third time in four years, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill that would make it a crime for anyone other than a parent to transport a minor across state lines for an abortion if the girl's home state has a parental notification or consent law.
The vote to approve the "Child Custody Protection Act" was 19-6.
Backers of the measure said it is needed to prevent what they described as thousands of cases in which friends, boyfriends, or others help girls with unintended pregnancies evade home-state parental involvement laws by driving them to a nearby state without such a law so they can obtain an abortion.
The bill, said Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, "seeks to protect the health and safety of young girls, and a parent's rights to be involved in the medical decisions of a minor daughter, by preventing validly enacted and constitutionally sound state parental involvement laws from being circumvented." At the same time, Chabot said, the measure "respects the rights of the various states to make these often controversial policy decisions for themselves and ensures that each state's policy aims regarding this issue are not frustrated."
But opponents claimed that the bill unconstitutionally ties the hands of girls seeking abortions. "The question is whether the people of one state should be able to set the policy for people of other states," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. "The federal government should not enable one state to hold another state's citizens hostage."
Before approving the bill, the committee rejected several amendments offered by Democrats to carve exceptions into the ban. By a vote of 16-12, the committee rejected an amendment offered by Maxine Waters, D-Calif., that would have exempted from the bill's requirements cases in which a minor's pregnancy was caused by a parent "or any other person who has permanent or temporary care or custody or responsibility for supervision of the minor, or by any household or family member."
Members also rejected, by 16-11, an amendment by Nadler that would have permitted grandparents or adult siblings to accompany minors across state lines for an abortion; and by voice vote the committee rejected an amendment by Bobby Scott, D-Va., to exempt from the law's purview taxi drivers or others who merely transport minors to out-of-state abortion clinics.
