Abortion Activists Target Parental Consent Protections For Minors

An activist group out of Missouri is using the state’s recently passed unlimited abortion constitutional amendment to go after the last remaining safeguards for women, girls, and babies on the books, including a law mandating parental notification and consent for a minor seeking an abortion.

Right By You, an organization that prides itself on instructing underage girls in Missouri on how to get birth control and abortions, filed a lawsuit on April 30 alleging that laws requiring a minor to secure a parent’s permission, or endure a “potentially traumatic judicial bypass process,” to end a pregnancy “flagrantly violate” the new amendment to the state constitution.

“The laws bully pregnant young people without parental support into giving birth and threaten legal action against and undermine the core activities of Good Samaritans who seek to help young people effectuate their own decisions about their pregnancies with dignity,” the lawsuit claims.

Missouri voters narrowly passed an amendment in November that enshrined abortion through all nine months in the state constitution. Proponents of Amendment 3 spent the months leading up to the 2024 election promising that adding a “right to reproductive freedom” to the state’s governing document would not threaten the abortion limits or parents’ rights already on the books in Missouri.

The activists deemed any attempt to inform voters about the ambiguous language and nature of the sweeping abortion amendment as “scare tactics.” The misnomered Missourians for Constitutional Freedom went so far as to claim that the amendment simply ensured “important health care decisions remain with families and their doctors, not politicians.” 

The lawsuit filed by Right By You, however, uses the ill-defined and broad terminology included in the new amendment to argue that “all people of childbearing age,” including underage girls, should be able to get an abortion whenever they want without authorization from someone else.

“Indeed, the text of the amendment makes clear that the right is expansive,” the lawsuit continues. “It expressly extends to any ‘person’ providing or facilitating an abortion in addition to any ‘person’ seeking one. The amendment leaves no doubt that laws that ‘delay’ abortion
care violate the Right to Reproductive Freedom.”

The lawsuit follows the release of camera footage allegedly showing a Kansas City Planned Parenthood schemed to transport a 13-year-old girl across state lines to get her an abortion behind her parents’ backs.

“This is a shameful and dangerous attempt by radicals hell-bent on the destruction of innocent life to undermine not only parental rights but also the health and safety of young women,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told the Missouri Independent. “Trafficking minors for dangerous procedures without parental consent is and should remain illegal.”

According to Kelsey Pritchard, political communications director for SBA Pro-Life America, “ending parental consent would enable abusers and traffickers to exploit minors in Missouri.”

“The abortion lobby’s litigation reveals the end goal of pro-abortion ballot measures. Rather than protecting a ‘decision between a woman and her doctor,’ these amendments protect abortion business’ profits at the expense of girls and their parents,” Pritchard said in a statement.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.