A new Alabama regulation, the most radical parental consent law in the country, puts minors seeking abortions virtually on trial, appoints a guardian for their fetus, and could drag family, friends, and acquaintances into court. The law, currently under challenge by the ACLU, went into effect July 1. It allows the court to appoint the embryo or fetus a "guardian ad litem," which is a person, usually a lawyer, tasked with advocating for the embryo's interests in court. It also requires that the district attorney appear to represent the interests of the state — which the law explicitly says are "to protect unborn life." And the DA can call the young woman's friends, family members, teachers, or employers as witnesses if he deems it necessary.

Most minors seeking abortionsinvolve their parents in their decision. Those who don't involve their parents often fear that a parent would try to prevent them from going forward with the abortion or would even harm them. While many states have laws mandating parental notification or consent for abortion, the Supreme Court has required that states with such laws also offer a confidential and expeditious mechanism for minors, where someone (usually a judge) evaluates whether the young woman is mature and well-informed enough to make her own decision about whether to have an abortion. If a judge decides she's not mature enough to have the abortion, then her options are to get her parent's consent for the procedure, have the baby, or turn to illegal means.

Getting a judicial bypass even in states other than Alabama is a difficult process. Most young women don't know they need one, and so after discovering they're pregnant and seeking an abortion are told, often by clinic staff, that they have to get their parent or guardian's permission or go to court. If they go the judicial bypass route, they have to find a lawyer and appear in court in front of a judge; the lawyer and usually the judge will ask questions to establish that the young woman understands her decision and is mature enough to make it.

It's now even more daunting in Alabama. The state law is explicitly written to make it more difficult for minors to terminate unwanted pregnancies. A young woman seeking a judicial bypass there won't just have to make her case to a judge with a lawyer at her side. She will be facing an adversarial process where she's essentially on trial. Her fetus or embryo will have an appointed advocate whose job it is to argue on behalf of that embryo's interests (which, one would reasonably conclude, are for the young woman to not terminate the pregnancy). She'll also be facing a DA who can call witnesses to challenge or corroborate the young woman's claims of her own maturity. So if she says she's a good student, the DA can call her teachers as witnesses. If she says she's responsible and works an after-school job, the DA can call her supervisor. And if her parents know the young woman is seeking a judicial bypass, the DA can call them too.

"This is flatly unconstitutional," Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, told Cosmopolitan.com. "The Supreme Court has recognized that if states are going to require parental consent, there must be an alternative for young women who can't go to their parents. This is not a real alternative."

One strange aspect of judicial bypass procedures, whether in Alabama or elsewhere, is that they require young women to prove they are mature and thoughtful enough to have an abortion, but of course there's no maturity requirement to have a baby or be a parent, and if young women are refused abortions, a baby is the result. When a minor is asking to terminate a pregnancy, she's already pregnant. The choices aren't "have an abortion" or "not be pregnant"; the choices are "have an abortion" or "have a baby," whether she later parents that child or places it for adoption. Yet courts require minors to prove their maturity to end a pregnancy — and sometimes the courts refuse to grant a bypass, like in a recent Nebraska case involving a 16-year-old girl who was taken away from her abusive parents and was a ward of the state and asked a judge to allow her to terminate an unwanted pregnancy without the consent of her foster parents. In that case, the court found that the girl wasn't mature enough to decide to terminate her pregnancy, but she was apparently mature enough to have a baby.

The Alabama law is even more troubling because both the DA and the guardian ad litem can appeal the judge's ruling, which isn't the case in standard judicial bypass proceedings, where the granting of a bypass is the final word. So even if the judge grants a young Alabama woman a bypass, she still may be blocked from getting the procedure if either the DA or the embryo's guardian decides to challenge the judge's decision — and given that it's now their job to block minors from terminating pregnancies, appeals seem likely. The clinic in Montgomery, for example, only performs abortions up to 12 weeks, so delays because of pending appeals can lead to a situation where a pregnancy progresses past the point where a local clinic can perform a termination. Then, a minor will have to arrange to get herself to another clinic, which may be hundreds of miles away, to obtain a later procedure that may be even more costly. Since Alabama has a 48-hour waiting periodfor an abortion, she may find herself showing up to the clinic only to be turned away and told to come back in two days.

And all of this is on the shoulders of some of the most vulnerable teens: those who can't go to their own parents for help.

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Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

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