Oct
29
Teenage abortion waivers not rare
Filed Under abortion, social services |
In the year since a new Florida law required clinics to notify the parents of girls under 18 before performing an abortion, 450 teenagers asked the courts for an exception. A disproportionate number of those petitions, nearly a quarter of all statewide, were filed in Palm Beach County. All but one got permission.
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By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
WEST PALM BEACH - An agonizing secret has brought more than 100 teenage girls to the juvenile courthouse.
Many are top students, high school athletes, responsible kids with part-time jobs and college scholarships.
But they are also pregnant and determined to have an abortion without telling their parents.
During the year following July 2005, when a new Florida law required clinics to notify the parents of girls under 18 before performing an abortion, 450 teenagers asked the courts for an exception.
A disproportionate number of those petitions — nearly a quarter of all statewide — were filed in Palm Beach County. In the first year of the new law, 112 girls here asked for an abortion they planned to keep secret from their parents. All but one got permission.
The success rates are similar statewide: Only 27 girls out of the 450 were denied in the first year.
Few girls in Palm Beach County are telling judges they fear their parents will abuse them. More often, they say they fear their parents’ reaction or can’t face them after making such an embarrassing mistake. Teens seeking the waiver tend to be smart, attractive and ambitious, judges say — not the kind of girls who are used to letting anyone down.
“People would be surprised at the type of kid that comes in,” said Juvenile Court Judge Peter Blanc. “Good parents should not always assume that their children can talk to them.”
The new law has thrust juvenile judges into a role that makes some of them deeply uncomfortable. They are required to ask someone’s daughter intimate questions about sex and pregnancy, make a decision after hearing from only one side, and rule on murky concepts like whether she is mature enough to go ahead on her own.
The girls, who keep coming at a rate of 10 a month, make some judges wonder about their mothers and fathers.
Quite a few parents in Palm Beach County would be surprised if they knew their daughters went to “a stranger in a black robe” instead of to them, said Juvenile Court Judge Roger Colton.
“Consider,” Colton said, “that you are the parent and your daughter gets an abortion without your approval and without you even knowing it.”
The hearings have given the judges a rare window into the private lives of young women choosing to end a pregnancy. One told a judge she wants to be an obstetrician, because she loves children. Another confided that she always opposed abortion, until she became pregnant herself.
In North Florida, a 17-year-old Jane Doe told a judge that she made good grades, volunteered for charity and sang in her church choir. She said she didn’t want to give up a baby for adoption, but couldn’t afford college if she had to care for a child. According to court documents, she was afraid her mother would kick her out of the house. And she didn’t want to embarrass her grandmother, who was prominent in their community and had criticized other girls who got pregnant too young.
Some girls tell Palm Beach County judges they have no qualms about their choice and just want to get on with their plans for college and career.
Some are afraid their parents would pressure them to have the baby. Others say they can’t stand to go through a pregnancy, but worry that they might feel sad about the abortion for years to come.
The hearings are “soul-wrenching,” Juvenile Court Judge Ronald Alvarez said. “They are, without a doubt, the most upsetting thing that I do.”
65 PERCENT VOTER APPROVAL
The majority of states — 34, according to the Guttmacher Institute in New York — enforce laws that require abortion clinics to involve at least one parent of girls under age 18.
Proponents of the law got it on Florida’s ballot in 2004, and nearly 65 percent of voters supported it. Florida’s Parental Notice of Abortion Act says clinics must inform a parent 48 hours in advance, unless there is a medical emergency or the teen already has a child or supports herself.
A teen doesn’t have to tell her parents if juvenile court judges decide she is mature enough to make the decision on her own, that it is in her best interest to have an abortion without telling a parent, or that she is a victim of abuse.
In 2005, there were 226,219 births and 92,513 abortions in the state of Florida. But because Florida is one of few states that do not require clinics to report abortions by age, it is impossible to pinpoint how the number of teens winning an exemption to the rule compares to those telling their parents.
The Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that researches reproductive health issues, gives a rough estimate of 6,500 abortions each year for girls under age 18 in Florida, based on 2000 statistics and percentages from other states. If those numbers held through 2005-06, when 450 girls asked the courts for a waiver, then about 93 percent of girls who had abortions told their parents first.
Counselors at Palm Beach County’s two abortion providers, Planned Parenthood of South Palm Beach & Broward Counties and the Presidential Women’s Center, said they strongly encourage teens to tell their parents about their pregnancies. The counselors use role-playing to help a teen prepare for an awkward conversation and offer to tell the parents themselves if the teen is too scared.
Though voters repeatedly have supported notification laws, many abortion-rights advocates still feel that they are unnecessary and misguided. And from the time the law passed, supporters of abortion rights mobilized to make the court hearings less intimidating for girls who say they cannot tell their parents.
The American Civil Liberties Union set up the PATH Project, which runs a toll-free hot line for pregnant girls and trains attorneys who volunteer to represent the girls statewide.
The Presidential Women’s Center in West Palm Beach gives teens a brochure that includes directions to the juvenile courthouse, a step-by-step guide about applying for a waiver and a list of eight specific questions a judge could ask.
It reassures girls that “across the country, the vast majority of patients who go before a judge are approved.”
ORANGE COUNTY HAS MOST
Two courthouses, in Orange and Palm Beach counties, have received more petitions than any others.
Orange County in the Orlando area has received the most cases, with only one denial among 142 girls hoping to have an abortion without telling their parents.
Orange also has one of the most streamlined application processes. Girls are assigned an attorney as soon as they apply for the waiver, and judges typically clear their courtrooms to hear their cases within an hour or two.
Mimi Rollins, who works for the court administrator there, said most of the girls came from other counties.
“We hardly have any that are from Orange,” Rollins said. “The clinics usually send them to us because they know it is quick, fast and easy.”
Conservatives worry that girls are seeking out friendly judges, but Susan Derwin, who heads the ACLU’s PATH project, said clinics send the teens to Orange County because they can get an attorney there.
The high numbers in Palm Beach County are harder to explain. The local courts do not appoint attorneys automatically, but like Orange, the county has a near 100 percent approval rate, with 130 cases approved through August and only one dismissed.
Those numbers far exceed those in other large counties. Miami-Dade County, for example, has nearly twice the population of Palm Beach and 20 licensed abortion clinics. But only 69 girls asked for a waiver through August.
Judge Alvarez said some girls from surrounding counties are filing in Palm Beach because local clinics direct them to the courthouse here.
The only abortion clinic in the four-county Treasure Coast is in Fort Pierce, so some girls from Martin and Okeechobee find it more convenient to travel to Palm Beach County for an abortion.
But Judge Colton said he has seen few girls from other counties. “By far, the majority” live in Palm Beach County, Colton said.
Mona Reis, who heads the Presidential Women’s Center, says the clinic makes girls aware of their legal right to go to court but would never encourage them to forgo notification. She said she does not know why Palm Beach County’s numbers might be higher than other counties.
Maybe there isn’t a reason, Reis said.
Judges typically ask the girl how she and her partner failed to prevent the pregnancy and what she plans to do to keep from getting pregnant again.
“It’s a very uncomfortable thing, especially for a male judge, to be asking a young female these types of questions,” Alvarez said.
But some of the judges’ discomfort also comes from the fact that these hearings are different from anything else they do. Judges are accustomed to ruling after weighing expert testimony and stories from both sides. But in the case of a waiver, judges can hear only from the girl herself.
In the end, Blanc said, “I really have to go on what she tells me.”
Many cases hinge on whether judges consider the girl “sufficiently mature” to decide. The idea of maturity is “really so subjective,” Blanc said. “It seems like more of a moral and character decision than a legal one.”
Judges approve most of the cases, Colton said, because appellate judges have ruled that teens do not need to have the maturity of an adult to terminate a pregnancy without telling a parent. The First District Court of Appeal wrote in April that the court simply needs to determine whether the “minor has the necessary emotional development, intellect and understanding to make an informed decision regarding terminating her pregnancy.”
During the past few weeks, too recently for the case to show up in state statistics, Blanc denied his first teen for lack of sufficient maturity. A clinic sent the girl to court as a precaution, but she didn’t need Blanc’s approval because she was a mother.
MANY FEAR PARENTS’ ANGER
State Rep. John Stargel, R-Lakeland, thought that the bypass should be a way to help girls from abusive families, not an easy out for those trying to avoid a difficult conversation. He wasn’t surprised that many teens seeking a waiver are from good families.
“If you didn’t care about your parents and what they thought, you’d run home and ’say, ‘Guess what, and what are you going to do about it?’ ” Stargel said. “But these are girls who don’t want to hurt their parents. And the reverse of that is also true.”
Stargel, whose term ends after the November elections, said his passion for the issue came from his own experience. When he was 19, he got his 17-year-old girlfriend pregnant. They decided to get married and have the baby. Their daughter was born five months after the wedding, and they are still together more than two decades later.
Many teens fear their parents’ anger, he said, but would be surprised by how they react.
Concerned that the bypass amounted to a rubber stamp, Stargel proposed a bill last session that would have made it more difficult for girls to win a waiver. Legislators who wrote the original law “didn’t put enough meat on the bones,” he thought. But his bill died in the House.
Abortion-rights activists say it would be dangerous to tighten the rules or force girls to wait any longer to have an abortion. They point to the case of Becky Bell, who was so determined to avoid Indiana’s tough parental notification law that she resorted to an illegal abortion. She died of complications in 1988, at age 17. Her parents became activists, speaking out about the notification laws across the country.
But Sheila Hopkins of the Florida Catholic Conference said girls from loving families should not have to deal with a pregnancy without the support of their parents. She worries about how the girls who try to handle it on their own will cope with their emotions.
“This should be a family decision, not this girl out there all alone with an attorney,” she said.
Judge Colton said he doesn’t know what the teens do after they step out of the courthouse, his ruling in hand.
Maybe they go straight to the clinic. Maybe they change their minds. Maybe one day, they tell their parents what happened.
Colton doesn’t like to dwell on that. Usually, he never sees them again.
Copyright 2006 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
October 29, 2006 Sunday
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