Gov. John Lynch said yesterday he would sign a bill to repeal the state's parental-notification law if it reached his desk. The contested abortion statute is the subject of an ongoing federal court case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

The high court upheld two previous rulings that the 2003 law is unconstitutional because it did not allow for an exception to protect the health of pregnant teenagers. The justices returned the case to U.S. District Court in Concord, charging Judge Joseph DiClerico with determining whether the law should be revised or struck down altogether. DiClerico last week decided to postpone any decision to see if the Legislature will act first.

Opponents of the law believe a new bill to repeal it will succeed this year, given that Democrats recently won control of the House and Senate. Until yesterday, though, the governor had not committed publicly to signing the bill. Lynch, a Democrat, supports abortion rights and in 2005 filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down the law. But he has also said he supports parental involvement, leaving open the possibility he might favor an amended version of the law instead.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Lynch, a Democrat, said the governor would sign the repeal bill. "The current law fails to protect the health and safety of all women," said Colin Manning, a Lynch spokesman. "If a bill repealing this unconstitutional law were to reach the governor's desk, he would sign it."

That bill is starting out in the House Judiciary Committee, which yesterday listened to 3½ hours of public testimony on the subject. Among those speaking, lawmakers who favor the repeal outnumbered their counterparts by a 2-to-1 margin. But a large majority - about four to one - of the members of the public who spoke opposed the repeal. Many were anti-abortion advocates who came to denounce abortion generally or address a perceived decline in civilization while also speaking about the bill.
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Rep. Liz Hager, the main sponsor of the bill, said the vocal opposition didn't reflect public opinion. She said she expects the repeal to pass the Legislature swiftly, especially with the governor's endorsement.

"I think it's going to fare fine," said Hager, a Concord Republican. "We should not be in the federal court system with a law we write, and I think that people are understanding that, and I think it will go through pretty fast."

The Legislature rejected parental-notification bills for years before adopting the current law, which passed narrowly in the House and by one vote in the Senate. The law - which allows abortion providers to ignore the notification requirement only to prevent the death of the minor - has never taken effect, because Planned Parenthood and others immediately challenged it in court.

After DiClerico ruled against the law, the state appealed unsuccessfully to the 1st U.S. District Court of Appeals in Boston, and then to the Supreme Court. The high court said the lack of a health exception made the law unconstitutional but left it to DiClerico to determine the intent of lawmakers in 2003: Would they have preferred a revision or no law at all?

DiClerico is holding off to watch the current Legislature. If lawmakers pass Hager's repeal, the case will be moot. If they keep the law, the judge must make a decision. If they amend it, "the legal landscape of the case may well change," DiClerico wrote, leaving that outcome uncertain.

Supporters of the repeal said the Legislature should erase the law to keep the decision out of DiClerico's hands. "This is not a duty we should impose upon him; it is not a duty we should shirk," said Sen. Peter Burling, a Cornish Democrat. "The best thing we should do, and we should do it quickly, is to repeal this unconstitutional statute."

Many repeal supporters said the drafters of the original bill deliberately omitted the health exception because they wanted to create an abortion test for the Supreme Court, triggering an appeal process that has consumed time and effort from the state attorney general's office.

The drafters of the law agreed that they deliberately left out the health exception but said they did it for another reason - "to further the important and compelling state's interest in protecting minors against their own immaturity," said Phyllis Woods, a former Republican lawmaker from Dover who cosponsored the original bill.

Woods said a health exception "could be so broadly interpreted that it could mean psychological, emotional, familial or even economic health or well being and is totally a subjective decision made by the abortion provider."

Rep. Fran Wendelboe, a New Hampton Republican who supported the original law, asked the judiciary committee to consider an amendment that would tweak the existing law to add an exception for a "medical emergency." Wendelboe's amendment - which bore the names of seven other Republicans, including Senate Republican Leader Ted Gatsas - would define the emergency as any situation in which immediate abortion would be required to prevent "serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of major bodily function."

Claire Ebel, executive director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, said it would be a mistake to amend the existing law. Instead, lawmakers should repeal the law outright, then consider other options later if they desire, she said. "It is not the process of the New Hampshire Legislature to attempt to doctor unconstitutional legislation," she said. "This is not simply a fix; this needs to be repealed so that it can moot this court case, which is costing the state hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Several who testified on both sides said they were driven by concerns about what was best for children, though those who wished to keep the law also repeatedly spoke in defense of parents. "A parent has a right to know if their daughter's going to get an abortion or not," said Jay Clair of Nashua. "To think otherwise makes me feel like I'm in The Twilight Zone."

Many who wanted to keep the notification law criticized Planned Parenthood or society in general. "You are accomplices in a culture of darkness," said Susan Clifton of Sandown.

Jordan Bell of Concord said he couldn't believe lawmakers would allow clinics to perform abortions on teenagers without parental consent. "This is the equivalent of saying that a butcher or a slaughterhouse has a better understanding about what the well-being is for animals and that the animal rights can be best protected by the slaughterhouse than those who own the animals and who raise the animals," Bell said.

Christy Dolat Bartlett, another Concord resident, appealed for a return from the "hysterical testimony" to the bill at hand. "Ideally, all girls should be able to talk to their parents about this difficult decision," she said. But "we can't mandate communication between a parent and a child."

Among the dozens who testified, two high school students came forward. Angela Harman, an 18-year-old junior from Concord, said she especially appreciated the significance of choosing birth over abortion as an adoptee who spent many years in a Russian orphanage. She said lawmakers need to counter a culture of consequence-free sex among American teenagers.

"It's upsetting to me that in the public school that I go to, Concord High School, they teach you to do whatever you want with your life," Harman said. "You learn how to get pregnant and do an abortion."

Amanda Rohdenburg, an 18-year-old senior from Sunapee, spoke in support of repeal. "Canceling the parental notification requirement will not contribute to the downfall of society," she said. "In fact, it will protect it."

The judiciary committee will discuss the bill again in a work session Thursday afternoon.

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By ERIC MOSKOWITZ