Abortion issue doesn’t belong

Abortion persists as a social and emotional issue in Hawaii, but most state legislators no longer regard it as a valid political or legislative issue.

For that reason it is improbable that the Legislature will give serious consideration to the abortion controversy during this session.

However, some lobbyists around the Capitol apparently are convinced that repeal of the state’s 1970 abortion law will be an issue this year. … The Honolulu Council of Churches listed the repeal of Hawaii’s abortion law as a pending issue. …

And in the first days of the session, several hundred anti-abortion demonstrators paraded around the Capitol to express their concerns.

State Sen. Dennis O’Connor, a Democrat from the 7th District (Kaimuki-Hawaii Kai), while sympathetic to the cause of the anti-abortion groups, believes they are wasting their time. …

"What they don’t seem to realize is that the state no longer has any jurisdiction over the problem," O’Connor said.

O’Connor was referring to two U.S. Supreme Court decisions handed down in the early 1970s, shortly after Hawaii liberalized the state’s abortion law and gave women the right to have an abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy, or the first 16 to 18 weeks.

In effect, O’Connor says, the high court’s decisions preempted the field, wiping out all state laws which banned abortions during the first trimester or which imposed other conditions.

Hawaii’s 1970 law, for example, allowed women to have an abortion but required that the operation or procedure be performed in a hospital. It further required that a pregnant woman must have resided in the state for a specific period of time. … Both requirements were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases originating in Texas and Georgia. ….

O’Connor, a former chairman of the Judiciary Committees of both the House and Senate … says only one avenue is open for Hawaii to again make abortion a criminal act.

"If Congress should propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, it would require the legislatures of three-fourths of the states to ratify it," he said. "That’s about the only way the Hawaii Legislature could get involved in abortion as a legislative issue."