Dispute over Abortion for Florida Teen Could Have Far-Reaching Consequences 

An intermediate appellate court in Florida teed up a major constitutional clash that could reshape abortion access and state law on parental and fetal rights.

The case, Doe v. Uthmeier, began as a run-of-the-mill judicial bypass case — when a minor petitions a court for approval to do something that would usually require parental consent. In the 1970s, in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade’s holding that the federal Constitution protected a right to abortion, states began passing laws requiring minors to notify or get consent from their parents before seeking an abortion. In 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Bellotti v. Baird that such laws could be constitutional only if they allowed for a judicial bypass hearing, permitting a minor to get an abortion if she could show she was mature enough to make her own decision or that abortion would otherwise be in her best interest. States like Florida responded by adding bypass options to their laws.

But in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court reversed Roe. The next year, Florida lawmakers passed a law criminalizing most abortions when fetal cardiac activity could be detected, usually around six weeks after a patient’s last menstrual period. The state’s law on parental involvement remained in place for the very small subset of minors who could identify a pregnancy and secure a bypass order before the state ban kicked in.

Earlier this year, a 17-year-old Florida girl tried to accomplish this feat. A trial judge the girl lacked the maturity to make the decision on her own. She appealed, as a Jane Doe, to Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal, seeking to overturn the lower court’s denying her permission to obtain an abortion. But the groundwork for a broader challenge — one that could invalidate the bypass process altogether — was already in place.

In 2024, a separate intermediate appellate court in Florida, the First District Court of Appeal, was set to hear a minor’s appeal of a trial judge’s decision denying her request for an abortion without the involvement of her parents. The court held that it couldn’t hear the appeal because there was no parent or other party named to oppose the minor’s request, and therefore no “case or controversy” to establish jurisdiction. In a concurrence, Judge Bradford Thomas previewed what the court could have done if it had jurisdiction: The right decision would have been to invalidate the bypass provision, he wrote.

So when Doe appealed, the Fifth District was ready. To ensure they could hear the case, the judges invited the attorney general to submit a friend-of-the-court brief in opposition to Doe. The attorney general then requested to intervene, arguing that the bypass option was unconstitutional because it allowed minors to receive medical care without their parents’ consent.

The court sided with the attorney general, stressing that Florida’s constitution recognized broader parental rights than those the Supreme Court has identified under the 14th Amendment. It also said there was a rich common law tradition of recognizing parental rights to consent before their children received any medical treatment, regardless of the age of the child or the procedure at issue.

The court did not reach the attorney general’s argument that any state law compromising parental rights should be subject to strict scrutiny, the most demanding standard of judicial review. Instead, the court ruled that it was unnecessary to reach this issue because the bypass option did not afford parents basic due process. If parents had the right to be present at hearings regarding child custody, the court reasoned, they surely had the right to be present regarding their “most fundamental” right — to decide whether a child should have an abortion — so long as parents were “presumptively fit.”

The court was unmoved by Doe’s argument that bypass options are designed to secure privacy for minors — particularly those who may face abuse or punishment for considering abortion. As such, parents do not receive notice of bypass proceedings or attend them. The court similarly brushed off showing that common law history on parental rights regarding children’s medical treatment is actually much more complex than the attorney general let on.

The court’s invalidation of the bypass provision invites the Florida Supreme Court to erode what little abortion access remains in the state. And the case raises the specter of an even more dramatic attack on abortion rights: the concept of fetal personhood.

Under Florida law, parental rights are protected under Article I, Section 2 of the Florida Constitution, which declares that “all natural persons, female and male alike, are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty, to pursue happiness, to be rewarded for industry, and to acquire, possess and protect property.” Some Florida Supreme Court justices have suggested this language recognizes rights not only for the parents of abortion-seeking minors but also unborn children themselves.

In a 2024 decision finding that a ballot measure on abortion rights could go before Florida voters, three dissenting justices that the ballot proposals could confuse voters because they would not be informed about how such an amendment would impact “constitutional personhood rights as applied to the unborn child.” The implication was that the word person in Article I applied the moment an egg was fertilized — and that rights, such as the right to life, applied to that person. The justices in the majority did not dismiss this personhood argument either. In a footnote, they framed the question as “unsettled” because prior law “had assumed that preborn human beings are not constitutional persons.” Fetal personhood also came up during oral arguments for this and before the Florida Supreme Court last year, as Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz wondered “whether" the term ‘natural person’” in the Florida Constitution “as a matter of ordinary meaning, include[s] the unborn.” Muñiz joined the majority in the ballot initiative case.

Jane Doe’s case will almost certainly end up before the Florida Supreme Court. We can’t be sure if the attorney general will raise questions about fetal rights on appeal. But the court may choose to tackle other questions about the meaning of Article I beyond those concerning the scope of parental rights.

The stakes of a ruling on parental or even fetal rights may seem comparably low in a state that already criminalizes virtually all abortions. But such a ruling would have real consequences. If the court recognizes sweeping parental rights, it may be hard for any minor to access abortion in any circumstances, including in scenarios where abuse or even sexual violence is alleged.

And a ruling that the word person applies from the moment of fertilization could have even more sweeping effects. Last fall, a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to protect reproductive liberty garnered about 57 percent of the vote, but failed because amendments require 60 percent to pass in the state. Reproductive rights supporters in Florida have vowed to again seek such an amendment. If the Florida Supreme Court has already held that the constitution safeguards a fetal right to life, even a successful amendment of this kind could have an uncertain fate: How would the justices reconcile clashing rights?

What’s more, a decision on fetal rights could render the state’s extremely strict abortion restrictions unconstitutionally permissive. If fetuses are granted personhood, the legality of allowing abortions very early in pregnancy, when certain health threats exist, or in the event of sexual assault or incest, would be called into question.

The impacts may reach beyond abortion. Last year, when the Alabama Supreme Court held that embryos counted as persons for the purposes of the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, that ruling, called LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, put a halt to in vitro fertilization in the state. A Florida ruling establishing that constitutional rights begin at fertilization could similarly have even further-reaching effects for fertility care.

It is too early to know what will happen next in Doe v. Uthmeier. What is clear is that a showdown over parental rights, abortion access, fertility care, and more is brewing in Florida — and the case could reshape the state’s reproductive rights landscape.

Mary Ziegler is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California Davis School of Law. Her new book, Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction, is now available.

Suggested Citation: Mary Ziegler, Dispute over Abortion for Florida Teen Could Have Far-Reaching Consequences, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (May 27, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/dispute-over-abortion-florida-teen-could-have-far-reaching-consequences