July 2, 1979
8-1 Decision
Majority: Burger, Stewart, Rehnquist, Powell, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens
Dissent: White

In Bellotti II, the majority made clear that states may impose parental consent requirements on minors seeking abortions, so long as a mechanism is provided for an alternate decision maker to approve the procedure. The decision builds on the Court’s earlier ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52 (1976), holding that abortion restrictions cannot give an "absolute, and possibly arbitrary veto" to a third party (spouse or parents) over a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

The Bellotti II majority acknowledged that "[a] child, merely on account of [her] minority, was not beyond the protection of the Constitution." Nonetheless, the Court determined that "the constitutional rights of children cannot be equated with those of adults" based on "the peculiar vulnerability of children; their inability to make critical decisions in an informed, mature matter; and the importance of the parental role in child rearing." The majority therefore concluded that "the power of the state to control the conduct of children reaches beyond the scope of its authority over adults."

To balance these potentially conflicting interests, the Court required that states seeking to require a minor to obtain parental consent before having an abortion, "must provide an alternative procedure whereby authorization for the abortion can be obtained." That alternative procedure, most commonly provided in the form of a judicial bypass, must provide an expeditious and confidential process by which a minor can obtain authorization for the abortion without parental involvement if she can demonstrate that she is mature enough to make the decision or that the abortion would be in her best interests. Applying these requirements to the Massachusetts law before the Court, the majority found it unconstitutional on its face because it permitted authorization for an abortion to be withheld even after a showing of maturity and required notification to the parents that the minor was seeking a bypass, thus violating the confidentiality requirement.

In concurrence, Stevens, Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, spoke out against the judicial bypass proposed by the majority writing, "that a need to commence judicial proceedings in order to obtain a legal abortion would impose a burden at least as great as, and probably greater than, that imposed on the minor child by the need to obtain the consent of a parent." As a consequence the four concurring Justices stated that they would find the judicial bypass procedure suggested by the majority unconstitutional.

Since Bellotti II, the Court has extended the requirement for a bypass procedure to laws requiring notification to both parents, but has explicitly left open the question of whether that requirement extends to laws requiring notification to only parent. See Hodgson v. Minnesota, 497 U.S. 417 (1990); Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 497 U.S. 502 (1990).