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Abortion Notification Try Fails
By
TRACEY L. REGAN, Staff Writer Trenton Times, January 8, 2002
TRENTON -- In a late-night session just
hours before the end of the 209th Legislature, the Senate sponsors of a proposed
constitutional amendment requiring parents in New Jersey to be notified before
an underage daughter has an abortion failed to bring the measure to a vote.
Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Demarest, a prime sponsor,
described the last-minute action as a final chance to place the amendment on the
ballot as a referendum next November.
While the bill passed in the Senate last year, it
failed to win the necessary three-fifths -- or super-majority -- vote to be
placed on the ballot this year. The state constitution requires that failing
that level of support in both houses, proposed amendments must win simple
majorities in successive terms.
"I've looked at the new Senate, and I don't believe
there would be 21 votes in that Senate," noted Cardinale, who said yesterday he
believed he had found the required 24 votes among the 40 members in the waning
days of the term. The measure passed by a super-majority in the Assembly late
last year.
Late last night, however, after a debate in the
Senate over the action's legality, Cardinale conceded he was one vote short of a
super-majority after a senator, Walter Kavanaugh, R-Somerville, who had pledged
his support, became ill and left for the night. Cardinale said there was no
point in pursuing the measure and withdrew it.
Legal experts here said yesterday it was unclear
whether a Senate vote in favor of the amendment would be upheld if challenged in
court.
"If they attempt to vote it by a three-fifths
majority today and then try to send that to the ballot, it's a legally chancy
position," said Albert Porroni, executive director of the nonpartisan Office of
Legislative Services. "If a three-fifths majority is not achieved, it is to be
filed until the next term."
Acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco, who is also
president of the Senate until the term ends at noon today, said that while he
has supported the measure in the past, "I just don't know if they have the votes
for it or if the legality of the situation is appropriate."
"It's kind of a last-ditch effort," he said,
adding, "I don't know that it will work."
Cardinale acknowledged the uncertainty but said he
believed lawmakers had the right to vote on the bill again, after first
retrieving it from the Secretary of State's office where it was sent after the
Assembly acted on it in December. The Senate had to vote to suspend its rules to
do so.
"This particular procedure has not been done before
in exactly this manner," Cardinale said, noting that legal advisers had said
they "can't guarantee the courts will uphold it."
"But everything we do is legally chancy," he added.
Assembly Democrats have said that the referendum
would face an uphill battle in the new Legislature, in which they will control
the lower house.
"I think it will be hard to even post it," the
incoming Assembly speaker, Albio Sires, D-West New York, said last December.
The amendment is an effort by Republicans to get
around a 2000 state Supreme Court ruling striking down a parental notification
law passed by the Legislature the year before. In its decision, the high court
said the law violated the state constitution because it treated pregnant
teenagers seeking an abortion differently from minors seeking other medical
procedures.
The Assembly approved the measure in 2000, but the
Senate failed to follow suit.
Citing concerns over the broad language of the
proposed ballot question, which would have allowed lawmakers to require girls to
notify their parents before any medical or surgical procedure, the Senate
sponsors amended the bill earlier this year to add the words "relating to
pregnancy," to narrow it. The Senate then passed it by a simple majority and
sent it back to the lower house.
The Assembly sponsor, John Rooney, R-Northvale,
said recently he was encouraged that the measure had won the support of some
Democrats in his house, and vowed to reintroduce it in the next term.
Abortion opponents said they were disappointed that
the effort faltered but not dismayed.
"This could take five or six years, but I'm
confident that it will get done," said John Tomicki, executive director of the
League of American Families, who insists that polls show a majority of parents
support such a measure.
The bill is adamantly opposed by many Democrats,
however, who argue it is inappropriate to amend the constitution to circumvent a
state Supreme Court ruling.
"This is a very dangerous bill," said Assemblywoman
Nia Gill, D-Montclair, before voting against the bill last December. "Although
it may seek parental notification, to do that it destroys the constitutional
balance of the separation of powers."
Gill and others also object to the amendment's
insistence on parental notification "irrespective of any right or interest
otherwise provided in the constitution."
"To say that a court will never be able to look at
this law to see if it's constitutional or not is very dangerous," she said.
"Next time the Legislature could craft a law that says we don't want to spend
money retrofitting buildings for the disabled."
There are Republicans who are troubled by it as
well.
Nancy Becker of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition
said she was dismayed that GOP lawmakers had pursued the bill, after the party's
trouncing in the last election. She attributed Republican gubernatorial
candidate Bret Schundler's loss in part to what she said was a 21 percent gender
gap in the election.
"Look at the overwhelming loss of Schundler,"
Becker said. "Why would they want to do this?"
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