John Paul Stevens

“ Indeed, 20 to 25% of minors seeking judicial authorization to proceed with an abortion without parental notification are accompanied to court by one parent, or at least have obtained the approval of one parent. In these cases the necessity either to notify the second parent despite the agreement of both the minor and the notified parent that such notification is undesirable, or to obtain a judicial waiver of the notification requirement, distracts the minor and her parent and disrupts their communication. ”

“ The district court's determination that an undue burden on the one group renders the statute unconstitutional for all is contrary to the Supreme Court's decision that a notice-consent/bypass procedure plainly serves important state interests and is narrowly drawn to protect only those interests. . . . Considering the statute as a whole and as applied to all pregnant minors, the two-parent notice requirement does not unconstitutionally burden the minor's abortion right. ”

“ In addition, the fact of having a child brings with it adult legal responsibility, for parenthood, like attainment of the age of majority, is one of the traditional criteria for the termination of the legal disabilities of minority. In sum, there are few situations in which denying a minor the right to make an important decision will have consequences so grave and indelible. ”

“ Although Utah law provides that a noncustodial parent retains the right to consent to marriage, enlistment, and the performance of major medical or surgical treatment, the right to notice of the minor's abortion is not among the parent's specific residual rights and duties. ”

“ Involuntary involvement of the second biological parent is especially detrimental when the minor comes from an abusive, dysfunctional family. Notification of the minor's pregnancy and abortion decision can provoke violence, even where the parents are divorced or separated. Studies have shown that violence and harassment may continue well beyond the divorce, especially when children are involved. ”

“ Based on these statistics, state officials suggest that the 'battering' of women by their partners 'has come to be recognized as perhaps the most frequently committed violent crime in the state' of Minnesota. These numbers do not include incidents of psychological or sexual abuse, low-level physical abuse, abuse of any sort of the child of a batterer, or those incidents which are not reported. Many minors in Minnesota live in fear of violence by family members; many of them are, in fact, victims of rape, incest, neglect and violence. ”

“ Minors who ordinarily would notify one parent may be dissuaded from doing so by the two-parent requirement. A minor who must go to court for authorization in any event may elect not to tell either parent. In these instances, the requirement that minors notify both biological parents actually reduces parent-child communication. ”

“ It is impossible to accurately assess the magnitude of the problem of family violence in Minnesota because members of dysfunctional families are characteristically secretive about such matters and minors are particularly reluctant to reveal violence or abuse in their families. ”

“ A State's value judgment favoring childbirth over abortion may provide adequate support for decisions involving such allocation of public funds, but not for simply substituting a state decision for an individual decision that a woman has a right to make for herself. ”

“ The family may assign one parent to guide the children's education and the other to look after their health. [32] "The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition." ”

“ Twenty to twenty-five percent of the minors who go to court either are accompanied by one parent who knows and consents to the abortion or have already told one parent of their intent to terminate their pregnancy. ”

“ Under Massachusetts law, an unmarried minor need obtain the consent of only one parent if the other parent "is unavailable to the physician within a reasonable time and in a reasonable manner," or if the parents are divorced and the other parent does not have custody. ”

“ The District Court found that few minors can take advantage of the exception for a minor who declares that she is a victim of sexual or physical abuse because of the obligation to report the information to the authorities and the attendant loss of privacy. ”

“ The statute provides that the bypass procedure shall be confidential, that it shall be expedited, that the minor has a right to court-appointed counsel, and that she shall be afforded free access to the court "24 hours a day, seven days a week." An order denying an abortion can be appealed on an expedited basis, but an order authorizing an abortion without notification is not subject to appeal. ”

“ What the State may not do is legislate on the generalized assumptions that a parent in an intact family will not act in his or her child's best interests and will fail to involve the other parent in the child's upbringing when that involvement is appropriate.↑ See, e.g., Brief for American Psychological Association et al. ”

“ But the regulation of constitutionally protected decisions, such as where a person shall reside or whom he or she shall marry, must be predicated on legitimate state concerns other than disagreement with the choice the individual has made. ”

“ One of the dissenters joined a third dissenter in expressing the opinion that "a single-parent notification requirement would withstand constitutional challenge." Id., at 1472. We granted certiorari, 492 U.S. 917, 109 S.Ct. 3240, 106 L.Ed.2d 587 (1989) .
There is a natural difference between men and women: Only women have the capacity to bear children. A woman's decision to conceive or to bear a child is a component of her liberty that is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. ”

“ The Court of Appeals also rejected the argument that the 48-hour waiting period imposed a significant burden on the minor's abortion right, finding that the waiting period could run concurrently with the scheduling of an appointment for the procedure. ”

“ The court experience produced fear, tension, anxiety, and shame among minors, causing some who were mature, and some whose best interests would have been served by an abortion, to "forego the bypass option and either notify their parents or carry to term." ”

“ Since that clinic typically has a 1- to 2-day backlog, App. 146-147, the statutory waiting period creates little delay.↑ Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc., 462 U.S., at 449, 103 S.Ct., at 2502, upon which the plaintiffs rely, is not to the contrary. There we invalidated a provision that required that mature women, capable of consenting to an abortion, wait 24 hours after giving consent before undergoing an abortion. The only legitimate state interest asserted was that the "woman's decision be informed." ”

“ In cases involving abortion, as in cases involving the right to travel or the right to marry, the identification of the constitutionally protected interest is merely the beginning of the analysis. State regulation of travel and of marriage is obviously permissible even though a State may not categorically exclude nonresidents from its borders, Shapiro v. ”

“ Baird, 443 U.S. 622, 642, 99 S.Ct. 3035, 3047-3048, 61 L.Ed.2d 797 (1979) (Bellotti II ) (opinion of Powell, J.) .
As we stated in Planned Parenthood of Central Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 74, 96 S.Ct. 2831, 2843, 49 L.Ed.2d 788 (1976) , the right to make this decision "do [es] not mature and come into being magically only when one attains the state-defined age of majority." Thus, the constitutional protection against unjustified state intrusion into the process of deciding whether or not to bear a child extends to pregnant minors as well as adult women. ”

“ Ashcroft, 462 U.S. 476, 490-493, 103 S.Ct. 2517, 2524-2526, 76 L.Ed.2d 733 (1983) ; id., at 505, 103 S.Ct., at 2532 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part) .↑ The Utah statute reviewed in Matheson required the physician to " [n] otify, if possible, the parents or guardian of the woman upon whom the abortion is to be performed." Utah Code Ann. § 76-7-304 (2) (1990) . Unlike the Minnesota statute under review today, the Utah statute did not define the term "parents." ”

“ Id., at 764.↑ As one of the guardians ad litem testified: "We have had situations reported to me by my other guardians as well as teenagers that I talked to myself who have said that they will consider telling one parent, usually mom, sometimes dad, but since they would have to go to court anyway, because they are absolutely sure they don't want the other parent to know, they don't tell either one." App. 239 (Testimony of Susanne Smith) .↑ See n. 21, supra.↑ One testified that minors found the bypass procedure " 'a very nerve-racking experience,' " Finding 60, 648 F.Supp., at 766 ”