ACLU Challenges Alabama Law That Pits Abortion-Seeking Teens Against State-Appointed Attorney for ‘Unborn Child’

The American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) is challenging an Alabama statute which essentially
pits the state against teen girls seeking to terminate a pregnancy.
The
ACLU filed the challenge in the United States District Court
for the Middle Distrit of Alabama this week on behalf of Montgomery
abortion clinic Reproductive Health Services and its owner June
Ayers.  

Since 1987, Alabama—like many other states—has required women
under 18-years-old to obtain parental consent before having an
abortion or, alternately, to obtain a court order allowing her to
bypass this requirement. But in July 2014, Alabama Gov. Robert
Bentley signed House Bill 494 into law, thus “radically alter(ing)”
the judicial bypass process, as the ACLU puts it. This new statute
“goes well beyond any judicial bypass statute that has ever been
upheld by a federal court” and “transforms the judicial bypass
procedure from an ex parte hearing into an adversarial proceeding”
in which a state attorney is appointed to represent the legal
interests of the embryo or fetus, the ACLU notes.

Under the Act, the district attorney or his or her
representative “shall” participate in the minor’s bypass
proceeding “as an advocate for the state.” The Act makes clear
that the state’s interest is “not only to . . . protect the
rights of the minor mother, but also to protect the state’s
public policy to protect unborn life.” Additionally, the Act
authorizes the court to appoint a guardian ad litem
to represent “the interests of the unborn child” at the
minor’s hearing.

The new law also wipes out privacy protections for
abortion-seeking teens, allowing the “unborn child’s” guardian and
the district attorney to subpoena witnesses to testify against a
minor at the bypass hearing. And it gives these parties the right
to appeal a juvenile court judgment in the minor’s favor,
which could “delay some minors past the point when they can obtain
an abortion, and force them to bear children against their will.”
For all of these reasons, Alabama’s new law regarding minors and
abortion “violates the right to liberty and privacy as
guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to
the United States Constitution,” the ACLU claims.