Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act
CHILD INTERSTATE ABORTION NOTIFICATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - September 26, 2006)
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, this legislation, which we have already considered in this Congress, poses a real threat to the lives and health of young women. It would require a minor who is pregnant, possibly as a result of parental abuse, incest, to carry the parental notification laws of her home State on her back to another State and hold doctors, grandparents, clergy and anyone else who tries to help her a criminal. The sponsors, not satisfied with extending State laws into other States, now want to enforce those State laws in other countries.
Not since the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 have we used the power of the Federal Government to enforce the laws of one State on the territory of another.
This latest crazy quilt of restrictions obviously has but one purpose, to impede the practice of medicine, to ensure that young women will have as few options as possible, to make criminals of relatives and adults, or minors, for that manner, who try to help them, and to teach those States, such as mine, that do not believe that these laws promote adolescent health, that Congress knows best and our citizens and our States do not.
Often, that adult assisting the minor is a grandparent, a sibling or member of the clergy. In some cases, the young woman may not be able to go to her parents because the parents are a danger to her.
We all agree that, ideally, a young woman faced with a choice of having abortion should go to her parents. But in some cases she may not be able to. That is what happened to Spring Adams, a 13-year-old from Idaho. She was shot to death by her father after he found out that she planned to terminate a pregnancy, a pregnancy caused by his own act of incest. But, under this bill, anyone who helped her cross the State line to get an abortion without telling her father so she could get shot would be guilty of a crime.
This bill also uses a narrow definition of medical emergency that seems to have been lifted from one of Attorney General Gonzalez's infamous torture memos. The prohibition ``does not apply if the abortion is necessary to save the life of the minor because her life was endangered by a physical disorder, physical injury or physical illness, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself or because in the reasonable medical judgment of the minor's attending physician the delay in performing the abortion occasioned by fulfilling the prior requirement would cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the minor arising from continued pregnancy, not including psychological or emotional condition,'' so long as the physician notifies the parent within 24 hours.
The bill now also excludes ectopic pregnancies and the removal of a dead fetus, for which I suppose civilized people should be grateful.
It is progress, although it still falls far short of the protection for a woman's health required by the Constitution, which the courts have ruled requires an explicit exception to protect the life or health of the woman, not just those few conditions a few extremists find acceptable.
No mental health exception? That is the only justification for helping a young woman who has been raped by her father. There is certainly no physical risk, yet this bill would require a doctor to seek that father's permission.
There are many things far short of death or a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function that can endanger a young woman. She deserves prompt and professional medical care, and no matter how much some people don't like it, the Constitution protects her right to receive that care.
In a perfect world, loving, supportive and understanding families would join together to face these challenges. That is what happens in the majority of cases, with or without a law.
But we do not live in a perfect world. Some parents are violent. Some parents are rapists. Some young people can turn only to their clergy or to a grandparent or a sibling or some other trusted adult. And this bill would turn those people into criminals.
If a 16-year-old girl was accompanied across a State line by her 16-year-old boyfriend for an abortion, this would make the boyfriend a criminal. If a rabbi or priest or minister helped her across the State line, knowing that her father or mother were violent and therefore they couldn't dare ask for parental notification, this would turn them into a criminal. The same thing with a grandfather or a brother or a sister. We should not be turning people who are helping people in distress into criminals. That is wrong.
This bill, although slightly modified, is as wrong and as dangerous today as it was when this House considered this last time.
There is another thing, too. We believe in 50 different States in this country. We believe in State sovereignty within the Federal limits. We call the States laboratories of democracy.
Many States, I think more than half, have chosen to have parental consent notification laws. Other States have chosen not to. We ought to respect the States that have chosen not to, as well as those that have chosen to do so. And to say that because someone comes from a State with a parental notification law, if she goes to a State without a parental notification law, someone who helps her to go there is committing a crime, I think that is unconstitutional and is a violation of the right to interstate commerce, to interstate travel.
But it also, as I said before, is an attempt to say to New York, which does not require parental notification and consent, that the law of some other State which does must prevail in your State as long as the person comes from that State. She can't escape it. She carries it with her on her back.
We have never tried to enforce the laws of one State in another like that since the Fugitive Slave Act of the 1850s. It is not a good precedent. This bill deserves to be rejected.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I have two questions about this bill that are completely aside from the merits. One is, why are we doing this bill? We passed the bill earlier. We passed essentially this bill earlier this session, the Senate passed a bill, and now we are passing a bill that isn't the same as the Senate bill. Why? So that no law, so nothing becomes law this year.
So I would like to ask the chairman, the distinguished chairman, why we are not passing the same bill the Senate passed? Because, otherwise, there is no possibility, as I see it, of getting an agreement before we leave.
I will yield.
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Mr. NADLER. Then why are we passing a bill again that we already passed earlier this year if the Senate bill is not the same and is not satisfactory?
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. If the gentleman will further yield, this is in the hopes that the Senate will look at this modified bill in prayerful reflection and send it on to the President.
Mr. NADLER. Reclaiming my time. In other words, we pass the bill, the Senate passed a different bill which the distinguished chairman thinks has many loopholes, and may have, I haven't read it, and so we are coming back.
Here we are, the last week before we adjourn, we haven't passed any of the appropriations bills into law, not one, and we are spending time on this bill when we have already passed it. And if the Senate has not passed it and they want to, they should negotiate with the Senate, they should have a conference committee. Instead, we are passing it again.
And I have to assume that the real reason we are doing it is just for political reasons, to rev up the troops of the antiabortion people for the election, and there is no real intent to pass a bill.
I have another question. This bill says in the key line: Whoever knowingly transports a minor across a State line with the intent that such minor obtains an abortion, blah, blah shall be fined or imprisoned.
My question, sir, and I will yield to you, is what does ``transport'' mean?
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. If the gentleman will yield, it means the same thing as the transportation of someone across the State line in violation of the Mann Act.
Mr. NADLER. Well, then reclaiming my time, I think that this bill is simply not very well drafted in that case, because in the Mann Act certain things are obvious.
Let's assume that you have a young woman and a young man, her boyfriend, who jointly go across State lines to get her an abortion. She is driving. She is transporting him, not the other way around. Should someone be guilty or not guilty depending on who is driving and who is not driving? That doesn't seem to make sense.
Mr. Speaker, the arguments against this bill are manifold.
Number one, the arguments against parental notification and consent are where you have a violent parent or where you have a parent that the child cannot confide in, you shouldn't require that. Ninety percent of the time there is no problem, it is fine. Sometimes there is, and you risk the life or the health of the child to require that she tell the parent that she is pregnant.
Number two, in such a situation, the child may confide, hopefully, there is someone she can confide in, her brother, her sister, her best friend, her clergyman, her teacher, and we would make them criminals if they help her.
The gentleman from New Jersey talked about the abortionist conspiring to take her across State lines. It is not the abortionist. It is a friend or a colleague or a clergyman or a grandparent. You shouldn't make criminals of them. Nor should we seek to enforce the law of one State in another State.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. NADLER. And. Finally, and after this statement I will yield, this law also says that if someone is asked to perform, if a doctor is asked to perform an abortion on a young woman, on a minor from another State, he must notify the parents in that State whether or not that State requires parental notification. So we are expanding, we are now putting the Federal Government and saying to a State when only two States are involved, neither which have a parental notification law, you must because we say so. There is no justification for that.
I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Let me make it very clear. What I just said was that if you go to the Yellow Pages and look at some of the ads and in newspapers and in other media, the abortionists actively try to solicit young girls 13, 14, 15, 16, to go across State lines. And you know as well as I do adult males, including predatory males, read those ads and act. All they have to do is go to New Jersey or some State other than Pennsylvania, where there is no parental involvement law, and thereby circumvent the parental notification, parental consent in that particular State.
Mr. NADLER. Reclaiming my time. I can understand that particular concern if this bill made it a crime to transport a minor across State lines for the purpose of getting an abortion, et cetera, et cetera, for money. If that person transporting that young girl were being paid to do it, then I think that there might be something we would want to do about that. But we are not talking about that. Well, we may be talking about that, but the bill is certainly not limited to that.
The bill applies to the situation where the person, quote, unquote, transporting her may be her boyfriend, her brother or sister, her grandmother, her uncle, her aunt, her best friend or clergyman or a teacher. Anyone who is doing it with the best motives to help her, with whom some of us here may disagree that that is the best motive, but it is not a predatory motive.
So if you want to write a bill against a predatory person, write a bill against the predatory person. Write a bill against someone who does it for a commercial reason, for pay, but not against all these other people.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.
Mr. Speaker, as I said before, some States have chosen to enact parental consent and notification laws, others haven't. There is a case against parental notification laws and consent laws because basically there are a certain number of parents, certain families where you can't ask the young girl to confide in her parents because they may subject her to violence. Or she feels she can't.
But you do want a young woman to confide in somebody, not to be alone in this time of great strain for her. You want her to be able to confide in a brother or sister or clergyman or priest or rabbi or uncle or aunt or grandparent or a teacher. And those people want to be able to help her.
Now, as I said before, there may be room for legislation to say that you shouldn't take people across State lines for the purpose of getting an abortion for commercial purposes.
But to make a criminal out of anybody who is trying to help a young girl, as they see helping her, as she sees helping her because she cannot confide in her parents, and especially if that helper may be the grandparent or the brother or the sister or a clergyman is simply wrong.
So this legislation is far too broad. It will place young women who need help in a situation where they cannot get help. It doesn't serve any useful purpose, and it should be defeated.
I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill, again.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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