Opinion ID: 2637239
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The State's Interests To Protect Children from Their Own Immaturity and To Protect Parents' Rights and Duties To Raise Their Children Are Compelling.

Text: Despite the promise of Planned Parenthood I to take into account the fact that children are involved during step two of the constitutional analysis  the step that asks whether an asserted state purpose or interest is `compelling'  the court today quickly passes over this step. The court's cursory discussion of the nature of the state's compelling interests at stake in this case is inconsistent with our case law on the right to privacy; moreover, it deprives the court's later means-to-ends analysis of any context. Let us consider each of these failings in turn. In Sampson v. State , [39] a privacy-based challenge to Alaska law precluding physician-assisted suicide, we set out the importance of carefully examining the nature of the competing interests involved. In upholding the ban on physician-assisted suicide, we said: This court has often emphasized the importance of personal autonomy under our constitution. Yet we have also recognized that the rights to privacy and liberty are neither absolute nor comprehensive  that their limits depend on a balance of interests. The nature of the balance varies with the importance of the rights actually infringed.[ [40] ] Because the nature of the balance varies with the importance of the rights involved and because in the context of the case before us now  pregnant children who are considering abortion  there are important rights on both sides of the equation, including the rights of parents to guide their children, it is particularly important that the court look closely at the nature of the state's interests in the legislation. The court's failure to look closely at the nature of the state's and parents' interests leaves its constitutional balance one-sided. Because the court has not fully and accurately set out the nature of society's compelling interest in the protection of children and of parents' right and duty to raise their children, it is impossible to accurately gauge how close the law comes to meeting its objectives. As a detailed look at the state's interest shows, it is multi-faceted and is served in many ways by Alaska's Parental Consent Law. It consists of at least two [41] separate aspects. First, society has longstanding and pervasive interests in protecting children from their own immaturity. The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized society's interest in protecting children from their own immaturity. In Hodgson v. Minnesota , [42] the Court held: The State has a strong and legitimate interest in the welfare of its young citizens, whose immaturity, inexperience, and lack of judgment may sometimes impair their ability to exercise their rights wisely. [43] The Court noted that [t]hat interest, which justifies state-imposed requirements that a minor obtain his or her parent's consent before undergoing an operation, marrying, or entering military service, extends also to the minor's decision to terminate her pregnancy. [44] In Stanford v. Kentucky, [45] Justice Brennan noted: [M]inors are treated differently from adults in our laws, which reflects the simple truth derived from communal experience that juveniles as a class have not the level of maturation and responsibility that we presume in adults and consider desirable for full participation in the rights and duties of modern life. . . . Adolescents are more vulnerable, more impulsive, and less self-disciplined than adults, and are without the same capacity to control their conduct and to think in long-range terms.[ [46] ] State courts too have long recognized that children require protection from their own immaturity. Pennsylvania, for example, has noted that the state's strong interest in protecting younger minors from the sexual aggressiveness of minors over sixteen is based on the immaturity and poor judgment of younger minors. [47] Similarly, Florida upheld a law prohibiting consensual sexual contact between minors sixteen and older and those under thirteen because the state had a compelling interest in protecting twelve-year-olds from older teenagers and from their own immaturity in choosing to participate in harmful activity. [48]