New Hampshire to Repeal Parental Notification Law [View All]

[Demeter]

Source: NYTimes

June 8, 2007
New Hampshire to Repeal Parental Notification Law

By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, June 7 — New Hampshire will become the first state to repeal a law requiring teenage girls to notify their parents before having an abortion, under a bill that won final passage in the State Senate on Thursday.

Gov. John Lynch has said he would sign the measure. The vote in the Senate was 15 to 9. The House vote, in March, was 217 to 141.

The parental notification law was the strictest in the nation when it was passed in 2003. The vote to repeal it reflects, in part, a sea change in New Hampshire politics since the 2006 elections, which swept a Democratic majority into the legislature for the first time in over a century...

Soon after the law passed, it was challenged by Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and other groups, which argued that it was unconstitutional because it did not allow an exemption from parental notification if the girl’s health was in danger. The law’s supporters had intentionally omitted such a medical exception, saying that it could be used as a loophole to allow many girls to skip telling their parents.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/us/08parental.html

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GO NEW HAMPSHIRE! NEVER AGAIN THE BIRCHER'S REFUGE!!