On Tuesday, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA), H.R. 2299 by a vote of 20 to 13. CIANA would: (1) prevent a non-parent—an abuser, a parent of a minor’s boyfriend, or someone else—from transporting a minor across state lines to avoid complying with a parental involvement law in the minor’s state of residence, and (2) require parental notification of a minor’s parents when the minor seeks an abortion in a state that is not her state of residence.
CIANA is needed to protect minors in states where the enactment of parental involvement laws is difficult or not politically feasible. When a minor is transported across state lines to obtain an abortion without her parents’ or legal guardians’ knowledge and/or consent, in circumvention of her home state’s law, the purposes behind that law are thwarted. Most importantly, young women and their unborn children in those states are as deserving of protection from predators and abortion complications as those in states with parental involvement laws.
For more information on the need for parental involvement laws, please click here. To read AUL’s statement in support of CIANA, please click here.
