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

DATE: TUESDAY, March 8, 1994                   TAG: 9403080182
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By BOB MARSHALL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

HEADLINE'JUDICIAL NOTICE' ISN'T THE SAME AS 'PARENTAL NOTICE'

House Bill 1355, which passed the House of Delegates, lets a judge authorize a minor's abortion without parental notice for any reason ``if the judge determines that the minor is mature .... [I]f the ... minor is not mature ... the judge shall determine whether the performance of an abortion upon her without notificiation of her parent or custodian would be in her best interests.''

Though killed Monday in the Senate Education and Health Committee, Senate supporters said they may yet try to bring it to a vote this week on the Senate floor.

The bottom line is: The House did not pass a ``parental notice'' bill with judicial bypass only for cases of sexual abuse or neglect. This is a ``judicial notice'' bill plain and simple, for it allows any minor to avoid parental notice by obtaining a judicial bypass.

The minor girl (coached by the abortionist) pays no court-filing fees; the proceedings are completely confidential and take precedence over all other pending court matters. The abortion petititon must be decided within four days. If not, the abortion is automatically authorized by the judge, without so much as a hearing! If the judge decides against the minor's abortion, an ``expedited, confidential appeal'' is available to be decided within five days.

It won't be long before the judicial-bypass papers are allowed to ``sit'' for four days rather than clog the court docket, so minors can obtain abortions without notifying their parents simply by filing a paper with the court. Abortion-clinic owners have standard legal-pleading forms and will have model judicial-bypass papers ready to go.

In Minnesota under such a law, only nine of 3,573 abortion-bypass petitions were denied! In Massachusetts, studies show that from 90 to 98 percent of such petitions are granted on grounds that the minor is mature. Almost all the rest are granted on grounds of the minor's best interests, yet not a single factor was identified to distinguish maturity from immaturity.

Judges in Massachusetts spend an average of 12 minutes per abortion request. Pro-life judges try to find ways to avoid deciding these cases, while pro-choice judges simply rubber-stamp abortion requests amid their busy docket of other cases. When pro-life judges deny abortion requests, they are routinely appealed and the judges are reprimanded by their judicial superiors or publicly criticized by the ACLU, whose attorneys are usually well-situated with state bar associations.

In cases of bona-fide child abuse, current law does not require a judicial bypass for any medical procedure including abortion without parental notice. This is because under Virginia law, abused or neglected minors are taken into custody of the local department of social services. According to a University of Virginia study in the '80s, physicians report sexual abuse to authorities in approximately 99 percent of such cases. Every local government social-service department is required by law to have personnel available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to notify the commonwealth's attorney immediately of even suspected cases of sexual abuse or assault.

Another huge loophole is that abortionists can perform abortion procedures on minors who suspect they are pregnant without first confirming the pregnancy. This medical fraud is called ``menstrual regulation.'' The term is a euphemism for early abortion, and was perceived by abortion proponents before nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973 as a useful deception to avoid abortion laws. One abortion advocate writes: ``If the woman or society wish[es] to avoid knowing whether a pregnancy has occurred but want[s] to confirm that a non-pregnant state exists, then all those seeking the procedure ... may be offered menstrual regulation.''

I tried to correct these gaping flaws in the legislation, and also add an amendment requiring notification of a parent of the minor boy, if known, who got the girl pregnant. Parliamentary maneuvers prevented my explaining an amendment on one occasion, and even offering my amendments the following day. I declined to vote on this bill.

If this bill passes, abortionists may complain in public, but will laugh all the way to the bank. This bill is not ``better than nothing'' because it will shelve the parental-notice issue.

House Bill 1355 is not the ``parental notice'' that the people of Virginia want and deserve. Making it easy to avoid communication between parents and their children on serious matters hardly strengthens families. The social difficulties prompted by legal abortion, including future pregnancy complications, higher miscarriage in wanted pregnancies, low birthweight, neonatal deaths, greater alcohol and drug abuse by women, single parenthood, rampant venereal diseases, irresponsibility in young males making them more prone to criminal behavior, and increased spending to ``fix'' a degenerating society will continue to skyrocket.

If this bill becomes law in its present form, Virginia will have enacted an illusory parental-notice bill, not a real one.

Bob Marshall is a Republican member of the House of Delegates from Prince William County.