Poll: 70% of Americans Back Abortion Parental Notification Laws

From LifeSiteNews:

WASHINGTON, November 28, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As the New Hampshire Attorney General gets ready to defend a challenge of the state’s parental notification law at the US Supreme Court, a recent poll has found almost 70% of Americans support the measure.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted earlier this month found 69% of 1,006 adults questioned favored parental consent before a minor child’s abortion, with 28% of respondents opposed. The poll also found that 64% were in favor of spousal notification before abortion, while 34% opposed spousal notification. Although the majority of respondents opposed an all-out constitutional ban on abortion, more than three-fourths were in favor of tighter restrictions on abortion.

Planned Parenthood of Northern New England successfully challenged New Hampshire’s parental notification law in 2000, when a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled the law unconstitutional because it did not have an exception for the so-called “health” of the mother.

The Supreme Court upheld a similar challenge to the Minnesota parental notification law in 1990, although in 2000 the high court ruled the partial-birth abortion ban unconstitutional because it did not include an exception for the health of the mother. The exception for ‘health’ has proven to be a wide open door for abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy, with the term ‘health’ being interpreted so broadly as to make it effectively meaningless.

[More]