SCOTUS nominee Samuel Alito's dissent in Casey is becoming a major battleground over which this nomination is being fought, at least among those vying for a rhetorical upperhand. Which is why those of us who support the Alito nomination need to be…

No, actually. She could get a waiver only if she said she’d been the victim of physical abuse. The fact that she feared future physical abuse wouldn’t be enough,

Nor would she be able to get out of it if she was separated but not yet divorced, and the baby wasn’t her husband’s.

I suggest you you look up the actual wording of the law we are discussing. Neither of the above reflect the law we are talking about. There could have been similar laws in other states and maybe that is where the confusion comes from.

In this case, his finding was that since the SC didn’t find an undue burden in requiring that a third party be informed in the other case, then this requirement wouldn’t cause an undue burden either.

Oh, give me a break. The relationship of minors to parents isn’t just that of one party to another. It’s a special kind of relationship of dependency. It’s in fact one of the few relationships of dependency and formal inequality that our society recognizes as legitimate: in almost all other relationships, the state says that the parties are formally equal. You can’t draw analogies between the parent/child relationship and any other relationship, unless you are trying to say that the other relationship is unequal and that one party is dependent upon and subject to the discipline and supervision of the other. Unless you are assuming a formally unequal relationship, it’s an analogy that has no bearing on a situation and can’t legitimately be used as a precedent.

In general, when a court or legislature tries to analogize your relationship with anyone to a child’s with her parents, you should run away as fast as you can. You’re about to be oppressed.

The law had an escape clause for that. If she feels any danger from anyone as result of the telling, she can sign a paper stating so and the abortion can proceed without notification.

No, actually. She could get a waiver only if she said she’d been the victim of physical abuse. The fact that she feared future physical abuse wouldn’t be enough, and presumably she could be prosecuted for lying about her history if she feared for her future safety. Nor would she be able to get out of it if she was separated but not yet divorced, and the baby wasn’t her husband’s. It wouldn’t matter if she and her soon-to-be-ex-husband were involved in a nasty custody battle, and notifying him about her sex life would give him ammunition against her. (And of course there’s no reciprocity, since he’s not required to tell her about his sex life.) It doesn’t matter if he’s a vindictive asshole who would call her pro-life boss and tell her she’s a baby-murdering slut. There are lots of good reasons for a woman not to tell her husband, and Alito thinks none of them are as important as his fantasy that the little ladies can’t live their lives without male supervision.

Anyway, the law was deemed unconstitutional. It is a non-issue except to discuss it in a hypothetical sense.

That’s exactly the point. Many of his worst rulings have been overturned by higher courts. That’s the whole reason that it’s so terrifying that he’s being appointed to the hightest court.

I can’t for the life of me understand what your stake is in defending this guy, EricP. Has it occurred to you that he’ll have essentially no power over your life and massive power over mine?

EricP, I said if you don’t want to tell someone something before that. Meaning, if you are afraid you’ll be beaten up, killed, etc. if you tell someone something, it doesn’t really matter if you need their permission or if you just have to tell them per the law. Does that make sense? Either way, they are told what you don’t want them to know. (Now, it can be said that just notifying them (maybe by phone) might keep you out of danger, but law enforcement isn’t very good at keeping women out of danger from abusive partners/spouses.) So I’m trying to get across that it’s two different things, but they both can put people in danger.

The law had an escape clause for that. If she feels any danger from anyone as result of the telling, she can sign a paper stating so and the abortion can proceed without notification.

Anyway, the law was deemed unconstitutional. It is a non-issue except to discuss it in a hypothetical sense.

I haven’t had coffee yet.

Me neither, soon hopefully;).

the difference between notification and permission is pretty meaningless.

Huh?

EricP, I said if you don’t want to tell someone something before that. Meaning, if you are afraid you’ll be beaten up, killed, etc. if you tell someone something, it doesn’t really matter if you need their permission or if you just have to tell them per the law. Does that make sense? Either way, they are told what you don’t want them to know. (Now, it can be said that just notifying them (maybe by phone) might keep you out of danger, but law enforcement isn’t very good at keeping women out of danger from abusive partners/spouses.) So I’m trying to get across that it’s two different things, but they both can put people in danger. I haven’t had coffee yet.

What does that have to do with anything? EricP said that Alito said the Pennsylvania law was Constitutional because it only required notification, and the Supreme Court had ruled that parental notification laws were constitutional as long as they didn’t require consent.

I don’t thing anyone is trying to equate women with children. When a judge is trying to decide whether a law is constitutional he/she has to look at precedence. Considering how little case law there is on abortion and that the Supreme Court decisions have tended to a little vague in order to get the 5 votes they needed, you end up examining rulings that are dissimilar in order try to guess what the SC would rule. In this case, his finding was that since the SC didn’t find an undue burden in requiring that a third party be informed in the other case, then this requirement wouldn’t cause an undue burden either.

Well, here’s one man attacking Alito and his defense of the PA law. Sally @ 35 does a good job of explaining the problems with defining a woman’s rights over her own body as subject to the influence of the husband. Besides, all the libertarians (EricP mentioned them) I know might consider spousal notification an undue government intrusion in a private, personal relationship.

Here’s the link:
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,615155817,00.html

I tend to be moderate on abortion, but I oppose most of the current legal restrictions, because they hurt women who are the least likely to be able to have a healthy pregnancy and baby – poor women, young girls and victims of abuse. When I first heard about parental consent/notification, it troubled me that girls as young as 11/12 are pregnant and at that age it is likely that they have been molested. However, it also troubles me the story that I included above and another story about Spring Adams, a 13 year old impregnated by her father, who tried to get an abortion but the father shot her to death when he found out, because he opposed abortion. Any situation in which a child is sexually abused is an extremely tragic one and it’s difficult to see sound legal solutions.

Anne – I agree. Also, I think it’s interesting that the law only mandates married women to tell their husbands and does not touch women who are pregnant out of wedlock. It reminds me of the way that marital rape was/is not considered rape. IMHO, the vast majority of Americans are fairly old-fashioned when it comes to sex roles: that after years of antirape activism, many people still believe that if a woman goes to a party or dresses sexy that she deserves to get raped and that only nuts and sluts allege sexual harrassment.