Illinois Supreme Court ends challenges to abortion law

Illinois Supreme Court declined to hear a dispute on parental notification law in the state that has been under dispute since 1995, declaring the law will stand.

The Illinois Supreme Court Thursday moved to put finality on a unenforced abortion parental notification law, determining the long-disputed 1995 law is constitutional.

 

The law, one of the cornerstones of all-Republican rule in Springfield during a brief period in the mid-1990s, requires doctors to inform the parents of girls age 17 and under that their daughter wishes to obtain an abortion.

 

“We find that, while a minor clearly has an expectation of privacy in her medical information, which includes the fact of her pregnancy, the intrusion on the minor’s privacy occasioned by the Act is not unreasonable,” Justice Anne Burke wrote in the court’s majority opinion.