The Nevada parental notification law, which had been blocked for the entirety of its time on the books, may take effect April 30 as a result of the Dobbs decision.
(LifeSiteNews) -- Nevada may enforce a 1985 law requiring parental notification for minors’ abortions while a legal challenge on its constitutionality works its way through the courts, U.S. District Court Judge Anne Traum ruled Monday.
The Associated Press reported that Traum ruled the law, which has been blocked for the entirety of its time on the books, may take effect April 30. She wrote that Planned Parenthood’s contention the law was “unconstitutionally vague” and violated teen girls’ equal-protection rights were not the questions immediately before the court but could still be litigated.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled the 1985 law unenforceable due to Roe v. Wade, but Roe’s overturn in 2022 prompted the start of a legal bid to restore it.
Potentially complicating the eventual legal outcome is the “Reproductive Freedom Amendment” that cleared a first vote in November and must pass once more in 2026 to be added to the state constitution. It establishes a state-level “constitutional right” to “make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including, without limitation, prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, vasectomy, tubal ligation, abortion, abortion care (sic), management of a miscarriage and infertility care.”
It allows abortion to be “regulate(d)” after fetal viability, albeit with the exception of any abortion claimed to be “necessary” for the mother’s “life or physical or mental health,” a loophole that would render any ban effectively meaningless. It would also establish that the state could not “penalize, prosecute or otherwise take adverse action” against individuals for “actual, potential, perceived or alleged outcome of the pregnancy of the individual, including, without limitation, a miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion.”
The language does not explicitly rule out parental notification, but pro-lifers fear it will be interpreted as doing so by judicial activists.
Though commonly opposed by the abortion industry and its activist allies, parental involvement rules for underage abortions stop the practice from being used by sexual abusers to cover up and continue their crimes, as is often the case – sometimes with the knowledge and cooperation of Planned Parenthood staffers, as established by undercover investigations by the pro-life group Live Action.
