COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit filed by the parents of a teenage girl that sought to have a Planned Parenthood clinic turn over a decades' worth of abortion records.
The court voted 4-3 this week not to hear the suit, leaving intact a state appeals court ruling last year that said the Cincinnati clinic did not have to turn over the records. Chief Justice Thomas Moyer dissented.
The girl's family alleges that the clinic unlawfully failed to get consent from a parent before performing an abortion on the girl, as required by Ohio law. The 2005 lawsuit sought records of other minors' abortion records going back 10 years in an effort show that the clinic had a pattern of violating the law.
Brian Hurley, the lawyer representing the girl's family, said he will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider.
Hurley has said the records would refute Planned Parenthood's claim that it always follows laws that mandate reporting of sexual abuse of minors and notification to parents of minors of their daughters' intent to have an abortion.
A Hamilton County judge in 2006 agreed to the records request. But a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in August that records on other patients weren't necessary for the lawsuit.
The clinic has said the girl gave them false and misleading information. Court records say she identified her 21-year-old boyfriend as her stepbrother and gave his cell phone number as her father's phone. She said she was 14 at the time of the 2004 abortion, according to the records.
The boyfriend, John Haller, was her youth soccer coach. He was later convicted of seven counts of sexual battery and is serving a three-year prison term.
Information from The Cincinnati Enquirer.
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