The House passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for any adult to transport an under-age girl across state lines to have an abortion without the consent of her parents. I haven’t followed this bill and haven’t read the Supreme Court’s relevant cases in this area since law school, so I have a question for any VC readers who are experts in this area: Under existing Supreme Court precedent, is this bill constitutional? What are the key cases and arguments?
I have enabled comments; descriptive legal analysis only, please.
UPDATE: The bill text is avilable here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Several commenters decided that it would be cool to use the comment section to discuss the normative question of whether the Constitution should be read to include a right to privacy. I have deleted those comments. To be more clear this time, I am interested only in the question of whether the bill is consistent with existing constititutional law. (Sorry to be so uptight about that, but I think most VC readers are more interested in hearing from specialists about existing doctrine.)
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