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Helena Silverstein, professor of government and law, got the idea for her latest book project, Girls on the Stand, when she began writing a series of journal articles in 1996 about mandated parental involvement for pregnant minors seeking abortions.
She used those journal articles as a foundation for the book manuscript, which she began in 2004. Girls on the Stand is scheduled for release May 1 from New York University Press.
Girls on the Stand demonstrates that safeguards promised by parental involvement laws do not exist in practice and that the legal process designed to help pregnant minors’ make informed decisions concerning abortion often victimizes them. Silverstein suggests that support for parental involvement is sustained by the false premise that courts function largely apolitically and without bureaucratic pitfalls. Basing a policy that regulates the right to abortion on confidence that the law stands outside of politics and free of bureaucratic red tape is, Silverstein argues, a mistake laden with consequences for those whom the right seemingly protects.
“United States Supreme Court precedent requires that when states mandate parental consent for abortion, they must provide minors with an option to petition for a bypass of that consent, and most states have designated judges as arbiters of the so-called judicial bypass process,” Silverstein says. “When I was reviewing this precedent with students, I commented that while Pennsylvania has a parental consent provision on the books, with an accompanying bypass process, New Jersey does not, and that young women from eastern Pennsylvania may well be traveling to New Jersey to avoid parental involvement and a court hearing. Not knowing if that was indeed the case, I began to research what minors do when they confront the prospect of a bypass hearing. In pursuing a study of Pennsylvania, I discovered that the bypass option is a poorly functioning mechanism. I decided to expand the research to Alabama and Tennessee, and found comparable failures in the bypass process.”
Silverstein gathered her findings for Girls on the Stand from surveys of courts and interviews with various people who have experience with the bypass process. EXCEL Scholars Ashley Brook ’98, an English and government & law graduate; Leanne Speitel ’02, a philosophy graduate; and Emily Francis ’03, a government and law graduate, conducted the surveys by calling each of the county courts in Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee responsible for handling bypass hearings. They also contacted the Department of Children’s Services in Tennessee, which is designated by state law to guide minors through the process.
The students began by using the statement, “I am calling to find out how a girl who’s not 18 who wants an abortion can get a judge’s permission to avoid telling her parents.” When respondents recommended they contact other departments within the court, agencies, and individuals independent of the court, they followed up to determine whether and with what amount of effort a minor would reach a bypass hearing.
Silverstein also coauthored an article with Kathryn Lundwall Alessi ’98 about judges who condition their grants of a waiver petition on the requirement that minors receive counseling from a pro-life Christian ministry, which was one of the pieces that provided grounding for the book.
Silverstein also interviewed judges, court intake officers, attorneys appointed to represent minors, attorneys appointed to represent the unborn, abortion providers, and directors of crisis pregnancy centers. She gathered a variety of information from these sources, including how bypass hearings function; the nature of questions posed to minors; roles played by judges, attorneys, and witnesses; frequency of grants and denials; perceived fairness of the hearings; and type of counseling minors receive when directed by a judge to obtain pro-life counseling.
“The book seeks to expose the practical realities associated with mandated parental involvement statutes and, in particular, with the judicial bypass option,” explains Silverstein. “It shows that in many cases, court personnel charged with implementing the bypass process are simply unaware that it exists. Occasionally, they are not merely unaware of their responsibility to handle bypass requests, but convinced that they have no such responsibility.
“Even where courts are aware of their responsibility, administrative difficulties often get in the way of implementation. Knowledgeable parties are often unreachable for hours, days, and sometimes even weeks. Political and religious views also breed implementation peculiarities, with some judges refusing to hear bypass petitions, others candidly stating they will deny such petitions, and still others engaging in practices during hearings that aggressively aim to persuade young women to forgo abortions. Indeed, some judges are willing to employ hardball tactics to get minors to bend to their will. In short, the book argues that the judicial bypass option fails to secure the constitutional rights of pregnant teens.”
Silverstein has done extensive research on the implementation and impact of parental involvement regulations pertaining to abortion. She has most recently been featured on ABC’s “World News Tonight/Sunday” and Philadelphia’s WHYY-91 FM National Public Radio live call-in program, “Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane.”
She also was interviewed on CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” about judges refusing to hear cases that involve abortion. She provided perspective on the same topic in an article in the New York Times, which also appeared in many other newspapers around the country via the Times’ News Service.
Silverstein has published widely on the subject in law reviews and other academic journals, including an article coauthored by Wayne Fishman, Speitel, and Francis which was published in Law and Policy. She is also author of Unleashing Rights: Law, Meaning, and the Animal Rights Movement.
A member of the Lafayette faculty since 1992, Silverstein has received the Marquis Distinguished Teaching Award and Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award.
Silverstein earned her Ph.D. and master’s degree in political science from University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from University of Pennsylvania.
For further reading on Helena Silverstein, go to the following links: