Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the latest AG to join a 19-state coalition supporting Indiana’s appeal to the Supreme Court in defense of its parental consent statute for minors who are seeking an abortion. His amicus was filed in the United States Supreme Court after the Chicago-based Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit blocked a law requiring parents to receive notice when a judge approves a request for a judicial bypass from an unemancipated minor so that she may have an abortion without parental consent.
Paxton said – “As the Supreme Court has previously recognized, nurturing his or her child is the ‘high duty’ of any parent. Never is this parental duty of custody, care, and guidance more necessary than when minors make the irrevocable, life-altering decision to have an abortion.”
Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. arose out of a 2017 Indiana law.
However, when the Supreme Court issued its ruling in June Medical Services LLC v. Russo last summer, it vacated the Seventh Circuit ruling and ordered that court to revisit the suit.
A three-judge Seventh Circuit panel upheld the injunction last March, and as a result, Indiana is now appealing to the Supreme Court to hear the case since the circuit courts of appeal have split on the legality of parental notification.