Washington, DC -- Pro-life Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) on Feb. 6 re-introduced the Child Custody Protection Act, pro-life legislation that would "make it a crime" for anyone other than a parent to transport minors across state borders to obtain an abortion, the National Journal reports. The bill (HR 476) is aimed at making it "more difficult to circumvent state parental notification laws."

Currently, 32 states require the "involvement" of at least one parent in a minor's decision to have an abortion. Among these, 14 states require that one or both parents be notified, and 18 states require that one or both parents issue consent prior to a minor's abortion.

The National Journal reports that "anecdotal evidence" indicates that "many" minors who live in states enforcing parental notification laws travel to states without such laws to have an abortion, a practice the Child Custody Protection Act hopes to regulate. Two states, Illinois and Montana, have legislative proposals that would prevent abortion practitioners from doing abortions on teens that have not fulfilled thier home state's parental involvement laws. Neither state has parental involvement laws and both have become a "dumping ground" for such abortions as several hundred out-of-state teens get abortions in Illinois annually and fifty teens come from surrounding states to Montana to have abortions per year.

This measure has passed in the House twice -- in 1998 and 1999 -- but has never cleared the Senate. However, Jessie Torres, senior legislative assistant to Ros-Lehtinen, is "optimistic" that the law will pass, "predicting that moderate Democrats in the House and the Senate will be reluctant to vote against a bill that attempts to assert parental prerogatives." The election of pro-life President George Bush may increase the liklihood of passage through Congress.

On the other hand, abortion supporters doubt that sponsors could "muster" the 60 Senate votes needed to break a Senate filibuster. White House spokesperson Scott McClelland did not indicate whether President Bush, who signed into a law a parental notice stature while Texas governor, would support the legislation, but said Bush "will work on streamlining the adoptions process, banning 'partial-birth' abortions, promoting abstinence education, and supporting strong parental notification laws like we have in Texas." And pro-life advocates are hoping that President Bush, will "use his influence to push legislation in Congress aimed at strengthening the hand of states that have adopted such measures," the National Journal reports.

Torres said the Child Custody Protection Act "ultimately protects parents' rights to parent," adding, "It's a pro-life bill, yes, let's be honest, but really it's a pro-family bill."

Teresa Wagner of the Family Research Council added, "To many, opposition to parental notification laws is anti-family/anti-parent to an absurd degree," noting that parental consent laws "exist to protect parental authority, respect family integrity, and recognize that minors are not legally competent to provide consent for most of these things on their own."

Monica Hobbs, a lobbyist at the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, "charged" that the legislation would "violate the principles of federalism, create delays in the abortion process, and wreak havoc for physicians, who would be responsible for knowing multiple states' requirements."

In a widely publicized 1995 case, a 12-year-old Pennsylvania girl became pregnant after sexual involvement with an 18-year-old man. Pennsylvania law requires parental consent (or judicial bypass) for an abortion to be performed on a minor. However, the man's mother took the pregnant girl for an abortion in New York, which has no parental involvement law. (The girl's mother did not even know that she was pregnant.) When Pennsylvania authorities prosecuted the woman for interfering with the custody of a child, she was defended by attorneys for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. They argued that the woman's actions were like those of "thousands of adults who each year aid young women in exercising their constitutional right to an abortion," and that such "aid" is protected by Roe v. Wade.