| OCR Text |
Show Goverifiiilr's decision duesooim oh new teen birth control law by NAN CHALAT Record staff writer Gov. Norman Bangerter's office has been besieged with calls for and against Utah's new parental consent bill and the state's chief executive may act on the controversial measure early next week, staffers say. The governor's press secretary, Francine Giani, said Bangerter is expected to act on the measure Monday or Tuesday. Since the bill's llth-hour introduction and passage during the special session of the Utah Legislature two weeks ago, the governor's office has been flooded with telephone calls and Giani said the callers are almost evenly divided between supporters and those opposing the measure. The measure, Senate Bill 10, was introduced on the last day of a special session called to deal with flooding matters that were postponed and a budget deficit that never materialized. Among those who voted for the bill was Park City's state representative, representa-tive, Glen Brown. Brown said he supported the measure at the insistence of Attorney General David Wilkinson, who told lawmakers the bill was necessary to help the state win its appeal in a challenge of an earlier law brought by Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and the Park City Community Clinic. That appeal is scheduled to be argued in August before the 10th U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. "There are high emotions on both sides of this issue," said Brown, who compared it to the furor raised over Utah's cable TV law, "But I gave in to the attorney general's argument that he needed the law to continue the fight in court. I believe this won't be settled until it is appealed as far as it will go and personally I would prefer that the courts make the decision," Brown said. The court case now on appeal was precipitated by a 1981 law barring minors from receiving family planning services without parental consent. In the lawsuit, the Park City Community Clinic joined Planned Parenthood Association of Utah in contesting the state's requirement that minors provide parental consent before receiving birth control services. At that time, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had altered its practice and distributed all family planning funds directly to the state for disbursement, rather than to the agencies administering the services as in the past. And state law required that any state-funded agencies receive parental consent before providing birth control services to minors. During that time, half of the Park City Community Clinic's funding came from the federal family planning funds, disbursed by the state. The two health-care agencies state was unlawfully overriding the congressional mandate requiring those family planning funds to be distributed regardless of age. Federal Court Judge David Winder agreed that the congressional congression-al mandate attached to the funds was being violated and stripped the state of its Title X grant funds. He ordered them disbursed directly I back to Planned Parenthood and the Park City Community Clinic. At the same time, a second state law outlawing the sale of ' contraceptives to unmarried minors without parental consent was declared unconstitutional. Diana Maxell, director of the five-year-old Park City Community Clinic, said the current parental consent bill, if signed into law, could jeopardize 70 percent of the clinic's I funding. But the governor's office has indicated that if the bill was signed into law, it would not be enforced i until its constitutionality has been determined in the courts. |
