Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 2009 Decisional Dignity: Teenage Abortion, Bypass Hearings, and the Misuse of Law Carol Sanger Columbia Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Health Law and Policy Commons, Juvenile Law Commons, and the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Carol Sanger, Decisional Dignity: Teenage Abortion, Bypass Hearings, and the Misuse of Law, 18 COLUM. J. GENDER & L. 409 (2009). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1116 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DECISIONAL DIGNITY: TEENAGE ABORTION, BYPASS HEARINGS, AND THE MISUSE OF LAW CAROL SANGER* I. IN TR O D U C TIO N .................................................................................. 4 10 II. JUDICIAL BYPASS HEARINGS ........................................................ 421 A . O rig in s .............................................................................................. 42 1 B . O peration .......................................................................................... 424 1. The P etition ................................................................................... 424 2. Procedural Features ....................................................................... 426 3. Maturity and Best Interest Standards ............................................ 429 4. Burden of Proof and Standard of Review ..................................... 432 C. Outcomes and the Nature of Harm ................................................... 433 III. H A RM TO M IN O R S ........................................................................... 437 A . The R isks of D elay ........................................................................... 437 B. The Risk of Public Exposure ............................................................ 440 C. Humiliation, Dread, and the Demands of Dignity ............................ 444 1. H um iliation ................................................................................... 444 2. Terror and Testim ony .................................................................... 447 3 . D ign ity ........................................................................................... 4 50 4. The Indignity of Exclusion ............................................................ 454 IV. COMPELLING NARRATIVE ............................................................ 456 A . Pardon T ales ..................................................................................... 457 B. Bypass Hearings and the Constraints of Genre ................................. 460 1. M anner and M aturity ..................................................................... 461 2. The Structure of Stealth ................................................................. 463 3. Gender and Narrative Demand ...................................................... 464 C. The Expression of Remorse .............................................................. 466 V. PURPOSE AND PUNISHMENT ......................................................... 470 A . D eterrence ......................................................................................... 47 1 * Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law, Columbia Law School. I am deeply grateful for the comments of Susan Bandes, Erin Dougherty, Donald Duquette, Robert Ferguson, Katherine Franke, Suzanne Goldberg, Susan Hays, Rachel Rebouch6, Anna Sochynsky and Jeremy Waldron, and for the research assistance of Samantha Harper Knox, Maureen Siedor, and Jean Zachariasiewicz. Thanks also to the Columbia Journalof Gender and Law staff, especially Chinyere Ezie. 410 Columbia Journalof Gender and Law [Vol. 18:2 B . Counseling and Consent ................................................................... 473 C . B ypass Sym bolism ............................................................................ 476 D . P unishm ent ....................................................................................... 477 VI. HARM TO THE LEGAL PROCESS .................................................. 479 A. Fault-Based Divorce: Hearings as Sham .......................................... 480 B . H U A C and Sham e ............................................................................. 484 C . Fairness and Legitim acy ................................................................... 485 D. The Dignitarian Luck of the D raw .................................................... 487 E. The Illegitimacy of Forum Exclusion ............................................... 490 VII. ABORTION POLITICS AND BYPASS PROCESSES .................... 492 V III. C O N C LU SIO N ................................................................................. 497 I. INTRODUCTION How might we think about reforming abortion regulation in a world in which the basic legality of abortion may, as a matter of constitutional law, at last be relatively secure? I have in mind the era just upon us in which the overturn of Roe v. Wade1 no longer looms so threateningly over the reproductive rights community in the United States and is no longer necessarily its central concern. There is now a general and seemingly well- founded optimism that under the Obama administration, those who support and rely on reproductive rights will not have to pray nightly for the health of Supreme Court justices (although we wish them well). As Senator Obama said in 2008 on the 35th anniversary of Roe: With one more vacancy on the Supreme Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a woman's fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe v. Wade. The next president may be asked to nominate that Supreme Court justice. That is what is at stake in this election. 2 It appears that since January 20, 2009, Justice Stevens may, if he wishes, hang out rather than hang on, and the rest of us may now be more confident that vacancies on the court are less likely to put the basic right to abortion in jeopardy. President Obama's first Supreme Court appointment, Sonia Sotomayor, characterized the Court's decision in Planned '410 U.S. 113 (1973). 2 Press Release, Barack Obama, Statement on 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade Decision (Jan. 22, 2008), http://www.barackobama.com/2008/01/22/obamastatement on_35th_ annive.php. 2009] DecisionalDignity Parenthoodvs. Casey as "settled" and "the precedent of the court" during her confirmation hearings.3 While confidence in a justice's future decisions is never assured, it seems, for the moment anyway, that Roe will not be overturned. 4 Despite the relief that flows from this greater sense of reproductive security, much legal work still needs to be done to secure healthier reproductive lives for women. Some of that work will remain constitutionally focused. Without the prospect of overturning Roe in the immediate future, pro-life legislators may focus ever more vigorously on whittling down women's access to abortion through the targeted hyper- regulation of abortion provision, access, and consent.5 Ever since the stingy affirmance of Roe in PlannedParenthood v. Casey,6 the Supreme Court has affirmed the constitutionality of almost every regulatory requirement imposed by states on abortion patients, clinics, and doctors. 7 Constant vigilance over Roe may no longer be required, but lawyers still have plenty to do defending its current boundaries. Yet constitutional advocacy is only part of the project for a pro- choice post-Roe agenda.8 This Article considers the possibilities for statutory abortion reform and seeks to extend the audience to include 3 Charlie Savage, Respecting Precedent, or Settled Law, Unless It's Not Settled, N.Y. TIMES, July 14, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2OO9/07/15/us/politics/ 15abortion.html. 4 See, e.g., Charlie Savage, On Sotomayor, Some Abortion Rights Backers Are Uneasy, N.Y. TIMES, May 27, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/us/ politics/28abortion.html. 5 See generally Center for Reproductive Rights, Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP): Avoiding the TRAP (Nov. 1, 2007), http://reproductiverights.org/en/document/targeted-regulation-of-abortion-providers-trap- avoiding-the-trap. 6Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 879 (1992). 7 As a Fourth Circuit judge observed in a South Carolina case, these burdensome regulations-"micromanaging everything from elevator safety to countertop varnish to the location of janitors' closets"-have in a number of states "made abortions effectively unavailable, if not technically illegal." Greenville Women's Clinic v. Comm'r, S.C. Dep't of Health & Envtl. Control, 317 F.3d 357, 371-72 (4th Cir. 2002) (King, J., dissenting) (upholding an elaborate set of state abortion regulations). 8 See Robin West, From Choice to Reproductive Justice: De-Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights, 118 YALE L.J. 1394, 1409-12 (2009) (arguing that the "court-generated rights discourse" has legitimated a minimalist state response to the problems of pregnant women). 412 Columbia Journalof Gender and Law [Vol. 18:2 legislatures in addition to courts. Are there arguments that have been obscured or overlooked in recent years but that, when brought