
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990                   TAG: 9006260267
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

HIGH COURT LIMITS STATES' RIGHTS BARRING ABORTION

The Supreme Court, sharply divided again on an issue it has dealt with seven times in 14 years, ruled Monday that a state may require a minor to notify both her parents before obtaining an abortion - provided that it gives her the option of seeking permission from a judge instead.

The ruling, relatively narrow in its reach, underlines how contentious the abortion issue has been for the court and how deeply the justices have been drawn into making fine distinctions between which abortion regulations pass constitutional muster and which do not.

At issue was a Minnesota law requiring notification of both parents - though not their permission - prior to an abortion, even if the parents are divorced or if one parent has long been estranged from the pregnant girl. The Minnesota law, whose drafters anticipated court challenges, contained a provision permitting a so-called "judicial bypass" of its parental notification rule if the courts should require it.

Monday, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Byron R. White and Antonin Scalia, voted to uphold the law without requiring the option of seeking a judge's permission instead of notifying both parents.

Justice John Paul Stevens, along with Justices William J. Brennan Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Harry A. Blackmun, voted to strike down the law entirely.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, exercising her now-traditional role as the court's swing vote on abortion, cast the deciding vote. She ruled that Minnesota could keep its notification rule, but only by providing the "judicial bypass."

The high court already has issued rulings that bar states from giving parents an absolute veto over a teen-age girl's decision to obtain an abortion. On the other hand, the court has upheld laws that require notification of one parent.

In a second case Monday, the court, 6-3, upheld a similar judicial bypass plan from Ohio. Abortion rights activists had challenged several aspects of the plan, saying that it was too burdensome to teen-agers seeking abortions. Brennan, Marshall and Blackmun dissented from the decision written by Kennedy.

by CNB