Posted on 11/29/2001 11:06:23 AM PST by Native American Female Vet
Assembly speaker tries to get abortion issue on November ballot
By John P. Mcalpin, Associated Press, 11/29/2001 14:52
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) New Jersey voters might get their say next November on a plan that could require parents be notified before their underage daughter gets an abortion.
Outgoing Assembly Speaker Jack Collins, R-Salem, is trying to force the parental notification measure through the lame duck Legislature.
Lawyers are screening state laws to see if a vote in December and then another in January meet a requirement that gets the constitutional amendment before voters in the next general election. Collins vowed Thursday to post the measure for at least one vote in the coming weeks.
If the lawyers agree, Collins said he will ask the Assembly to just say yes one more time before Jan. 7, a day before Democrats take control of the Assembly and get a share of the Senate leadership.
''Absolutely. It definitely will be up in December. I personally hope that it will go up again in January and it will be on the ballot in November,'' Collins said. Collins has tried to require parental notification before, but the Supreme Court rejected an earlier law he championed.
Under this new bill, the constitution would be amended to specifically allow the Legislature to pass laws requiring parental notification before medical procedures.
To appear on the ballot, a constitutional amendment must win a three-fifths majority in both houses in one year, or simple majorities in both houses in two consecutive years.
In June, the Senate held two votes on the bill in one day, the final before the summer recess. Needing 24 votes for that three-fifths majority, the first count was 19-16. An hour later, another vote tallied 21-15.
Collins then postponed a vote in the Assembly. If the lawyers agree, the Senate would need to vote once more.
Democrats in both houses have objected to the measure.
Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco, who is also Senate president, has supported the amendment. Gov.-elect James E. McGreevey has said he would support a parental-notification law if it had appropriate exemptions.
The proposed amendment is an attempt to circumvent an August 2000 state Supreme Court ruling that said a 1999 statute requiring minor girls to notify parents before an abortion was unconstitutional.
The legislation does not mention abortion specifically, but adds a clause to the constitution to allow the Legislature to pass laws requiring parents be notified before their children undergo any medical procedure.
Any clinic or other "medical" establishment who performs any procedure on any unemancipated minor without the consent of the minor's legal guardian should be held fiscally responsible for any post-surgical damages. Abortion mills make money. That's what they do. It's a lucrative business, turning live babies into dead babies. If they usurp the parental responsibility for the minor's healthcare, then they should assume the parents' fiscal responsibility for any damage they cause.
If a 15-year-old girl has an abortion without her parents' consent, then the abortion mill should be liable for any money needed for post-abortion stress counseling, ob/gyn services, and other expenses.
Abortion mills will take money from a desperate minor, not get the consent of the grandparent whose grandchild they're killing, and then demand that the minor's parent(s) pick up the cost for correcting the damage they do. There's not an abortion mill in the country who would commit an abortion on a minor under a fiscal liability law like this.
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