Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [107]
Each of these sad and resolute Janes appearing before the supreme court to ask the justices to compel local judges to apply the law of the state of Texas got the same answer from Priscilla Owen: no.
Owen told Jane Doe 2 that under the “best interest” language of the law she failed to establish an abortion was in her “best interest.” The law, as Mr. Bumble said, “is a ass.” But it doesn’t require proof of anything so subjective as whether an abortion is in the best interest of a minor. The language of the law required months of angry haggling in the Texas Legislature and reads: “If the court finds that the minor is mature and sufficiently well informed, that notification would not be in the minor’s best interest, or that notification may lead to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse of the minor, the court shall allow a bypass.”
The law requires minors to prove that “notification would not be in the minor’s best interest.” Owen demanded the young woman prove that “abortion is in her best interest.” Talk about rewriting law.
Jane Doe 1 spent months in a state district court, while she held down a part-time job, attended school, and took her college boards. She feared that her parents, who had strong anti-abortion convictions, would stop supporting her financially if they learned she had had an abortion. “There is some evidence,” Owen wrote, “that Doe is not mature enough to accept responsibility for her actions or her future. She intends to continue to seek and take support from her parents in virtually all aspects of her life, but not with regard to her decision to have an abortion.”
How could Jane 1 win? By using the law as it was intended she only proved she was not mature enough to use the law as it was intended.
Owen even established a religious standard that exists nowhere in the Texas law. Before another Jane could get a judge to approve of an abortion, “she should also indicate to the court that she is aware of and has considered that there are philosophic, social, moral, and religious arguments that can be brought to bear when considering an abortion.” Owen used her judicial robes to cover her ass on this one, adding that requiring a minor to be aware of religious prohibition of abortion is “not prohibited by the Establishment Clause.”
Just as day follows night and just as Willie Searcy was not going to get a dime from Ford, Jane Does 1–13 were not going to get an abortion if Priscilla Owen had any say in it. Her opinions have the feel of something lifted from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Like the matrons who regulated reproduction in Atwood’s 1986 futuristic novel, Justice Owen was aiming for results. If she had to make law rather than interpret it, so be it.
Disturbed by his colleague’s opinions, Justice Albert Gonzáles responded: “The United States Supreme Court has observed that abortion is a divisive and highly charged issue. Thus, we recognize that judges’ personal views may inspire inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric. Nevertheless, the issue’s highly charged nature does not excuse judges who impose their own personal convictions into what must be a strictly legal inquiry. . . . As judges we cannot ignore the statute or the record before us. Whatever our personal feelings may be, we must ‘respect the rule of law.’ ”
Gonzáles went on to say that to “construe the Parental Notification Act so narrowly as to eliminate bypasses, or to create hurdles that simply are not to be found in the words of the statute, would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism.”
Gonzáles is now Bush’s White House legal counsel. But for a Texas jurist to call a colleague from the same party “a judicial activist” is like talkin’ trash about somebody’s mama. It just ain’t done.
ASSOCIATE JUSTICE GREG ABBOTT didn’t use the A-word [activist] when he attacked an Owen’s opinion that