The United States Supreme Court yesterday found a problem with New Hampshire's parental notification law but told a lower court to fix it rather than create national precedence by remedying the flaw itself.

Rather than the sweeping decision many expected, the justices neither eroded abortion rights nationwide nor kept with past practice of overturning an entire abortion law just because one part of it is unconstitutional.

In a 10-page, unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that without a health exception, the state's parental notification law can be struck down or limited to only abortion cases where a minor's health is not in jeopardy. But the justices left the decision up to a lower court.

Even with the case still to be decided, both sides of the abortion debate declared the ruling a victory yesterday, but not without disagreeing over how broad the required health exception must be. That debate will likely intensify: Broad health exemptions favored by pro-choice advocates are criticized by the pro-life proponents as legal loopholes allowing pregnant girls to use minor ailments to avoid notifying a parent.

As written, the state's parental notification law requires pregnant minors to tell a parent or a judge before getting an abortion. The law exempts girls whose life is at stake but not girls who need an immediate abortion to avoid health complications. Two federal courts struck down the law as unconstitutional because it had no health exception, prompting Attorney General Kelly Ayotte to ask the Supreme Court last year to reinstate the law.

It has yet to be enacted.

Yesterday, Ayotte said she was pleased the justices found the notification law constitutional in most cases. She read the ruling to require a health exception so narrow that few minors would be affected, namely girls who need an immediate abortion to avoid major consequences such as organ failure or infertility. Emotional or mental distress would not enough to avoid notifying a parent, she said.

"This is different than the general health exception," Ayotte said. "The opinion says significant health risks." She noted that the justices described the relevant cases as those that would pose "irreversible damage" to minors' health.

Not surprisingly, the abortion rights community read the same 10-page ruling differently.

Dawn Touzin of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which led the challenge to the notification law, said the ruling is a victory largely because she believed the justices reaffirmed their commitment to broadly protect pregnant women's health.

She quoted from the ruling: "Our precedents hold that a state may not restrict access to abortions that are 'necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for preservation of the life or health of the mother.'"

Why then, did the justices, go on to further define the health risks as "significant" and "irreversible?"

Touzin said those were examples of health exceptions, not the extent of them.

Lawrence Friedman, an assistant professor at the New England School of Law in Boston, agreed. "Those are . . . not the limits of a health exception," he said. "It's not enough that a woman is depressed. A doctor must decide that her health is in danger. But I think (Ayotte) is probably wrong to say this can not be a mental or emotional" health issue.

Liza Dube, political director for NARAL, Pro-Choice New Hampshire, an abortion rights advocacy group, said she will consider it a loss if the parental notification law is upheld. But like other pro-choice advocates, she said she is relieved that the Supreme Court has continued to require a exception to protect women's health.

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