Girls on the Stand : How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors / Helena Silverstein.
Silverstein, Helena, author.
2007
KF9315 .S57 2007
Available Online

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Title Girls on the Stand : How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors / Helena Silverstein.
Author Silverstein, Helena, author.
ISBN 9781479841288
DOI https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479841288.001.0001
Published New York, NY : New York University Press, [2007]
Copyright ©2007
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers 10.18574/nyu/9781479841288.001.0001 doi
Call Number KF9315 .S57 2007
Dewey Decimal Classification 342.7308772
Summary Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that states may require parental involvement in the abortion decisions of pregnant minors as long as minors have the opportunity to petition for a &#"bypass" of parental involvement. To date, virtually all of the 34 states that mandate parental involvement have put judges in charge of the bypass process. Individual judges are thereby responsible for deciding whether or not the minor has a legitimate basis to seek an abortion absent parental participation. In this revealing and disturbing book, Helena Silverstein presents a detailed picture of how the bypass process actually functions.Silverstein led a team of researchers who surveyed more than 200 courts designated to handle bypass cases in three states. Her research shows indisputably that laws are being routinely ignored and, when enforced, interpreted by judges in widely divergent ways. In fact, she finds audacious acts of judicial discretion, in which judges structure bypass proceedings in a shameless and calculated effort to communicate their religious and political views and to persuade minors to carry their pregnancies to term. Her investigations uncover judicial mandates that minors receive pro-life counseling from evangelical Christian ministries, as well as the practice of appointing attorneys to represent the interests of unborn children at bypass hearings.Girls on the Stand convincingly demonstrates that safeguards promised by parental involvement laws do not exist in practice and that a legal process designed to help young women make informed decisions instead victimizes them. In making this case, the book casts doubt not only on the structure of parental involvement mandates but also on the naïve faith in law that sustains them. It consciously contributes to a growing body of books aimed at debunking the popular myth that, in the land of the free, there is equal justice for all.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jun 2022)
In New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
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Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I Parental Involvement Mandates
1 A Balancing Act
2 The Legal Landscape
Part II Gaining Access to the Bypass Process
3 Satisfaction
4 Ignorance
5 Misconduct
Part III The Judicial Pulpit
6 Judgment Day
7 Facing the Fetus
Part IV Law and Politics
8 The Constitutional Fine Print
9 Myth-Guided Policy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

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