Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that states may require parental
involvement in the abortion decisions of pregnant minors as long as
minors have the opportunity to petition for a &#"bypass" of parental
involvement. To date, virtually all of the 34 states that mandate
parental involvement have put judges in charge of the bypass process.
Individual judges are thereby responsible for deciding whether or not
the minor has a legitimate basis to seek an abortion absent parental
participation. In this revealing and disturbing book, Helena Silverstein
presents a detailed picture of how the bypass process actually
functions.
Silverstein led a team of researchers who surveyed more than 200 courts
designated to handle bypass cases in three states. Her research shows
indisputably that laws are being routinely ignored and, when enforced,
interpreted by judges in widely divergent ways. In fact, she finds
audacious acts of judicial discretion, in which judges structure bypass
proceedings in a shameless and calculated effort to communicate their
religious and political views and to persuade minors to carry their
pregnancies to term. Her investigations uncover judicial mandates that
minors receive pro-life counseling from evangelical Christian
ministries, as well as the practice of appointing attorneys to represent
the interests of unborn children at bypass hearings.
Girls on the Stand convincingly demonstrates that safeguards
promised by parental involvement laws do not exist in practice and that
a legal process designed to help young women make informed decisions
instead victimizes them. In making this case, the book casts doubt not
only on the structure of parental involvement mandates but also on the
naïve faith in law that sustains them. It consciously contributes to a
growing body of books aimed at debunking the popular myth that, in the
land of the free, there is equal justice for all.
