By AP/Maria Hickey
St. Louis, MO. – The Illinois Supreme Court today issued rules that could lead to enforcement of a long-ignored abortion law.
The law requires doctors to notify the parents of girls 17-years-old or under 48 hours before performing an abortion.
The law passed in 1995 but was never enforced because the Supreme Court refused to issue rules spelling out how judges should handle appeals of the notification requirement.
Now the court has issued the rules, just two days after announcing it would take up the issue.
Before the notification law can take effect, a federal judge would still have to lift the order barring its enforcement.
The ACLU of Illinois is hoping the state's attorney general will prevent that from happening
Lorie Chaiten, director of the Reproductive Rights Project for the ACLU of Illinois, says Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan does not have to ask to have the injunction lifted.
"We're hoping that she will conclude as we do that it would be inappropriate to reopen that 10-year old judgment and she would just leave it," Chaiten said.
Chaiten says the ACLU will wait to see what the attorney general does before considering legal action against the law.