The NYT Magazine x ProPublica story tells the story of G, a young person in Texas who sought permission to make her own decision about having an abortion via judicial bypass. (Photo: Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt for The New York Times)
I recently spoke with the New York Times Magazine about my work helping young people access abortion care for a feature story published in print yesterday.
Young people have always faced barriers to reproductive healthcare, especially abortion. Since losing Roe, it’s harder than ever.
Pennsylvania is one of 36 states with a parental involvement law that requires a young person to receive parental consent and/or notification before they can end a pregnancy. These laws remain in effect despite opposition from relevant medical experts including the American Medical Association. As the AMA notes, research on patterns of interpersonal violence and abuse has shown that family violence is at its worst during a family member’s pregnancy, immediately following childbirth, and during the adolescence of the family’s children.
These laws assume all families are alike. Most people don’t realize such laws disproportionately burden low-income teenagers who live with grandparents or in another family arrangement. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania’s parental involvement law entrenches a myopic view about what kinds of families are legitimate by narrowly defining who can consent to a minor’s abortion.
The seventeen-year-old in the New York Times Magazine story had unstable and unreliable parents, which meant she could not count on their consent. She was forced to ask a judge for permission to make her own decision about her pregnancy through a legal process known as “judicial bypass.”
Under Pennsylvania’s law, young people under 18 years old have the right to judicial bypass. While that’s better than not having the option, I can tell you from working within the system that the process can be traumatic and cause delay to critical healthcare—which is exactly why we devote ourselves to assisting young people navigating the process.
Imagine being a pregnant teenager without a supportive family structure—or a young person who wants to keep their medical decisions private—confronted with a time-sensitive healthcare need that can only be accessed with the approval of a judge.
In Pennsylvania, the judge’s role is narrow: They are supposed to assess if the person is mature enough to make their own decision about the pregnancy. The judge in this story exemplifies the invitation of personal bias into the courtroom and misapplication of law. He denied the judicial bypass, undermining the petitioner’s judgment that she was not ready to become a parent. The judge did not address whether she was mature enough to make this decision but instead whether he wanted her to carry the pregnancy to term. In so ruling, he violated her right to self-determination and created trauma and hardships in her life, a researched and documented likely outcome for people forced to carry unwanted pregnancies. In other words, when he denied her right to decide her reproductive future, he ignored medical experts and common sense to impose his personal beliefs.
Luckily, I haven’t encountered such a ruling in my work representing petitioners in Allegheny County in the judicial bypass process in Pennsylvania. Still, even with the help of a lawyer, young people face unique barriers to abortion care on top of securing an order from a judge. In my experience working with young people pursuing judicial bypass, they routinely voice concerns about having little control of their busy school and work schedules and express significant stress over financial and logistical barriers to ending their pregnancy. Most often, the judicial bypass process is an added stressor for my clients. Though I work to address any concerns, judicial bypass sends them the clear message that their lives, aspirations, and futures are subject to judicial approval.
As I said in the NYT Magazine article, we’re concerned not only about the obstacles to abortion care we help young people navigate, but about the young people who don’t find us, or other help, at all.
If you are a young person who needs assistance accessing abortion care in Pennsylvania, please review this information and contact us at 412-281-2892, and someone will return your call.
Sincerely,
WLP Staff Attorney Sophia Elliot
Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond. As a non-profit organization, we can not do this work without you.
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