Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 26, 1990 TAG: 9007260357
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CONCORD, N.H. LENGTH: Medium
Souter wrote a committee chairman that the judges did not want to be forced to decide whether a minor who did not have parental consent for an abortion should be allowed to terminate her pregnancy.
He said the bill before the Legislature failed to provide guidelines for the judges to use in such decisions, and would also promote "judge-shopping" by petitioners seeking a judge inclined to give a favorable ruling.
The letter is among the few public statements Souter has made on the divisive issue of abortion, which is sure to play a major role in his confirmation hearings.
Since Souter made clear he was writing at the request of his fellow judges, abortion-rights advocates said they did not interpret the letter as an indication that Souter favored abortion rights.
"I wish we could say that you could interpret this that way, but you could just as easily say that he favors a parental-consent law but just doesn't think the court or the judges should be involved," said Peg Dobbie of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Indeed, other Superior Court judges since Souter was elevated to the state Supreme Court have sent virtually identical letters to the Legislature during debate of parental-consent laws over the past decade, all of which have been defeated.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that parental-consent laws must contain an option permitting a judge to decide if the minor seeking an abortion does not want to consult her parents.
Souter's two-page letter said the court was not taking a position on whether the Legislature should require parental consent.
The judges objected that in passing the bill the Legislature would be endorsing as the will of society "to leave it to individual justices of this court to make fundamental moral decisions about the interests of other people without any standards to guide the individual judge."
Without clear guidelines, Souter wrote, "there would be left only the individual judge's principles and predelictions" and "As carefully considered as these might be there would still be those of only one individual, not those of society."
He then said the judiciary often is criticized for imposing its views on the society at large and said the pending parental consent law would force an individual justice to impose his or her individual view.
"As you would expect, there are some judges who believe abortion under the circumstances contemplated by the bill is morally wrong, who could not in conscience issue an order requiring an abortion to be performed," Souter wrote, without giving his own view.
"There are others who believe that what may be thought to be in the `best interests' of the pregnant minor is itself just as necessarily a moral as a social question upon which a judge may not morally speak for another human being whatever may be that judge's own personal opinion about the morality of abortion."
by CNB