View the Table of Contents. Read Chapter One.
aDoes a terrific job of laying out how the courts have conspired
to limit the abortion access of teenaged girls. The results are
clear, convincing, and enraging. How we- and the lawmakers who
represent us- respond will indicate whether the pro-choice
community has the wherewithal to fight back and defend Roe. Helena
Silverstein has broken the silence on judicial bypass. It is now up
to the rest of us to take action.a
--"Z Magazine"
aSilverstein implements a tremendous research design that yields
a very well-written book, and the resulting evidence backs up a
powerful indictment of street level justice at work.a--"Law and
Politics Book Review"
aDoes a terrific job of laying out how the courts have conspired
to limit the abortion access of teenage girls. The results are
clear, convincing and enraging. . . . Silverstein has broken the
silence on judicial bypass. It is now up to the rest of us to take
action.a
--"New York Law Journal"
aSilversteinas book is a welcome addition because, rather than
focusing on normative debates about abortion that almost anyone
interested in the question is already familiar with, she focuses on
how parental notification laws actually work on the ground. The
book is judicious and moderate in tone. . . . A first-rate work of
social science.a
--"American Prospect Online"
aThatas the law; whatas the practice? Helena Silverstein, a
political scientist, surveyed the courts charged with implementing
the parental bypass in Alabama, Tennessee and
Pennsylvaniaa]Silversteinas findings, which range from disturbing
to appalling, are set out in Girls on the Stand: How Courts Fail
Pregnant Minors.a
--"San Francisco Chronicle"
In the wake of the Supreme Court's 1973 "Roe v. Wade" decision,
many states tested "Roe" by placing restrictions on abortion
rights. Most states now have parental consent laws for women under
age eighteen. For minors who have reason to avoid parental
involvement, the Supreme Court has instituted a generally welcomed
compromise that allows minors to seek authorization by a third
party, usually a judge. In this groundbreaking study, Silverstein
demonstrates that this compromise is fatally flawed. . . .
Silverstein does an excellent job of explicating the serious
problems with this compromise, concluding that it is rooted in the
myth that judges can be relied on to be unbiased. . . . Silverstein
has produced an important contribution to women's studies and legal
practice and theory.a
--"Publishers Weekly"
aHelena Silverstein's important research reveals a court system
that all too often fails the most vulnerable teenagers.a
--Louise Melling, Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom
Project
aTaking on the emotionally charged issue of mandatory parental
involvement in the abortion decisions of minors and judicial bypass
provisions in three states, Silverstein carefully lays out and
skillfully dismantles myths that sustain support for these
policies. Her prose is lucid and engaging, her argument powerful
and persuasive. This book is one of the best examples of a new
generation of scholarship on law and legal processes.a
--Austin Sarat, co-editor of "From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State:
Race and the Death Penalty in America"
aSilverstein develops an incisive, empirically rich, and tightly
reasoned case about how the beguiling amyth ofrightsa props up a
fatally flawed public policy for pregnant minors. This is a
veryoriginal, powerful, and important book that deserves to be read
by a wide audience.a
--Michael McCann, co-author of "Distorting the Law: Politics,
Media, and the Litigation Crisis"
aSilverstein's research on the by-pass protections written into
parental notification legislation reveals how and why these
protections provided for pregnant minors are subverted by clumsy
bureaucratic procedures and by politically driven judicial
decisions. In so doing, she brings empirical evidence, conceptual
sophistication and extraordinary good sense to divisive
controversies over reproductive rights, legality and
democracy.a
--Stuart Scheingold, Professor Emeritus of Political Science,
University of Washington
The 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 audaciousacts 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 naAve 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.
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