A devastating decision from Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeals would eliminate access to abortion care for young people unable to get written, notarized parental consent, Human Rights Watch and If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice said today. The May 14 opinion moves to strike down parts of Florida law that allow young people to petition a court for permission to access abortion without notifying and getting consent from a parent or legal guardian. The case could end up before the Florida Supreme Court.
The vast majority of Florida youth considering abortion involve a parent in their decision. Those who do not often have no access to a parent or fear that parental involvement will lead to severe consequences, such as physical abuse, loss of housing, family alienation, or forced continuation of a pregnancy against their wishes. The only alternative in Florida law for young people in these circumstances is petitioning a judge for a waiver through the judicial bypass process. This week's decision moves to eliminate that option.
"Florida's judicial bypass process has been the only pathway for some young people without parental support to exercise their right to access abortion care without leaving the state," said Margaret Wurth, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. "This decision would give unsupportive or even abusive parents unchecked power to block abortion access and force young people to continue pregnancies against their will."
In the November 2024 election, a majority of Florida voters (57 percent) supported a constitutional amendment to protect the right to access abortion, but it fell short of the 60 percent threshold required to amend the state constitution.
Florida youth face extraordinary barriers accessing abortion care. Abortion is banned after 6 weeks of pregnancy, and patients must make two trips to a clinic - at least 24 hours apart - to access care. Young people under 18 in the state face the added barrier of forced parental consent and notification, or judicial bypass.
A 2023 Human Rights Watch report documented the harms of Florida's forced parental consent law and called on state legislators to repeal it. Many US states, including New York, Illinois, and New Mexico do not mandate parental consent or notification and enable young people to access confidential abortion care with support from the people they trust.
Youth seeking judicial bypass are often in highly vulnerable and precarious circumstances as they seek time-sensitive abortion care in a restrictive and hostile environment. Judicial bypass is a challenging and burdensome process that poses risks to young people's safety and confidentiality. Accessing reliable information and legal support can be difficult, and appearing before a judge can be highly stressful and even traumatizing. Young people must demonstrate that they are sufficiently mature to decide to have an abortion without parental involvement, or that involving a parent is not in their best interest. Judicial bypass can involve intimate and invasive questions about highly sensitive topics. Though deeply flawed and highly onerous, it offers an alternative for those facing lasting harm from forced disclosure to a parent or legal guardian.
"No young person should be forced to carry a pregnancy and give birth against their will," said Jessica Goldberg, Senior Youth Access Counsel at If/When/How. "Making young people who cannot safely include a parent in their abortion decision choose between having the abortion they want, and their safety and wellness is a disgusting and cruel use of state power."
The case before the appeals court involved a pregnant 17-year-old who wished to get an abortion without involving her parent and petitioned a trial court in Clay County for a judicial waiver. The judge denied the young person's request finding she did not have "the requisite maturity" to decide to end the pregnancy. Judges in Florida deny far too many young people's requests for judicial waivers.
Prominent US healthcare associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and others, oppose forced parental consent. The AAP found, "most minors 14 to 17 years of age are as competent as adults to provide consent to abortion."
The young person and her lawyer appealed the denial. In this case, the appeals court blocked the petitioner from accessing care, by rejecting the young person's appeal and affirming the lower court's decision.
The court then made the highly unusual move of inviting the state attorney general to submit an amicus curiae brief in the case. Florida's attorney general then moved to intervene in the case, joining as an adverse party, and argued that the judicial waiver process conflicts with parents' constitutional rights. In its ruling, the appeals court invalidated the sections of Florida law providing for judicial bypass and invited Florida Supreme Court review by certifying a "question of great public importance."
"The court examined a deeply harmful law and made it more harmful and more extreme, by giving no alternative for young people whose parents would oppose or block their decision to end a pregnancy, or subject them to serious and irreparable harm," Wurth said.
Under international human rights law, parents have rights and responsibilities to care for their children, but young people's right to health affords them an increasing degree of decision-making autonomy as their capacity evolves, including around access to healthcare services like abortion care. Human rights experts have urged all governments to guarantee the best interests of pregnant youth and "ensure that their views are always heard and respected in abortion-related decisions." The appeals court decision does the opposite, Human Rights Watch said.
"Requiring written parental consent gives parents complete veto power over a young person's abortion decision-making while also creating extreme barriers to abortion for those young people who, for whatever reason, cannot get a parent's consent in writing," said Goldberg. "Whether a young person can access abortion care or not can determine the entire trajectory of their life." In recent years, anti-abortion policymakers in Florida have enacted harsh restrictions designed to make it nearly impossible to access abortion care in the state. Though the six-week ban, in effect since May 2024, made it difficult for young people to pursue judicial bypass before reaching the state's gestational cutoff, data obtained by Human Rights Watch from the Florida Courts show some young people managed to.
"Young people have the right to access abortion care without being subjected to a parental veto," Wurth said. "Once again Florida leaders are putting young people in harm's way and playing politics with their lives as they look for new ways to cut off access to abortion care."
