I agree with Ms. So that on the whole parental notification is a good thing. Full disclosure, I am an avid reader of Townhall and would classify myself as conservative. I like to see what the "other" side has to say as well, especially after Tuesday night. As the father of a soon to be 8 year old daughter the issue of abortion and all that surrounds it has started to become more important to me than ever before. It is my greatest hope that my wife and I have been and will continue to raise our daughter in a fashion that makes her aware that she can tell us anything that is going on in her life. A 13 year old girl(or boy for that matter) can't even go on a school field trip without parental consent but the majority here want us to believe that that same 13 yr old girl is mature enough and of sound enough mind (while pregnant at 13) to make this decision on her own? As a conservative, I am the last person that would normally suggest that more government regulation will make things better, but in this case I must agree with the author.

This is the highest quality, most heartfelt collection of responses to any article I've ever read in Salon. They all deserver red stars.

A minor's parents will not refuse to allow her to get an appendectomy.

Sure they will. I once worked with a girl whose mother refused to take her to the doctor for severely swollen tonsils. She finally relented when Girl's friend's mother, a nurse, threatened to take the girl to the ER herself.

My mother refused to let my sister get her wisdom teeth pulled at 17, even though they were impacted. After a lot of pain and her 18th birthday, she got them extracted by a dentist who couldn't believe anyone would let their kid suffer like that.

I also believe in parental consent, with judicial bypass. But parents deny their kids essential medical treatment al the time.

I was raised by pro-choice feminists, long before either of those terms was coined. In fact, before my older brother was born, they wrote their wills leaving EVERYTHING to Planned Parenthood, and have been pro-choice, pro-sex education, anti-war, civil rights activists going back to the 1940s. They are also retired academics and psychoanalyzed atheists. (You get the picture.) I have had loving and warm relationships with them for my entire 47 years. Yet, as a 16-year-old college freshman, faced with a positive pregnancy test, I was unable to ask for their help in getting an abortion. In New York. Post Roe. (The positive test turned out to be false and I never really had to address the issue more concretely than that.)

As a straight-A superachiever, I was too ashamed to tell them about this big blunder of mine. I turned to my brother, who helped me figure out how to deal with the logistics. Years later, when I told them about it, they were both very sad that I had been so ashamed. My father even told me that when he was divorced and a graduate student in Chicago in the 50s, he helped someone get an abortion. He didn't tell me much more than that, but I understood that he was saying gently that these things happen.

If someone like me couldn't talk to her parents about having an abortion, I shudder to think about those poor girls who have religious, uneducated, low-income parents with no health insurance trying to discuss the subject with their parents.

So, according to others here, 90% of girls talk about an unplanned pregnacy with their parents.

So, presumably 10% can not/do not.

I can assure you that if my younger sister, still in her teens, became pregnant unexpectadly, she would come to me for advice before she EVER considered talking to our parents. Considering I'm in my mid-twenties, one would think that our discussion regarding the situation could just as beneficial - or FAR MORE beneficial that talking to our mother. We'd talk about her options: abortion, keeping the baby, adoption; then we'd talk about the consquences of each.

Even if my little sister did make a decision regarding an unplanned pregnancy on her own, I know she's concious enough of the future to think as carefully about her actions as she could before coming to any decisions.

...plus if she's smart enough to make the decision to be a parent on her own, and in doing so, becoming an adult in the eyes of the law, she's smart enough to choose for her body.

Anyone who really cares about women and their right to choose cares about women of all ages. Women with little support, understanding or experience -- teenagers -- need the right to choose as much as anyone else.

Congrats to CA for voting No on this terrible proposition.

Let me definitively inform you that you are neither a feminist nor pro-choice. Anyone who supports parental notification laws adheres to the idea that women and children are nothing more than the property of men.

You say you see no good reason to make an exception for parental notification in the case of minors who become pregnant? Perhaps this is because you don’t come from an abusive or incestuous family? Is it inconceivable to you that some little girls are impregnated by their own fathers? What makes you think that a man capable of raping his own daughter would want the best for her future? Maybe he just wants a steady stream of helpless victims?

Yes, there are situations in which a court can permit a minor to have an abortion without parental notification. But imagine reality beyond your safe little bubble for a moment. Ask yourself how easy is it would be for a pregnant 12-year-old with no money or transportation to negotiate legal intervention? The idea that parents “have known and cared for their teenager for far longer” is a dangerous and naive assumption. Is it your opinion that all mothers and fathers love and care for their children? Sorry, but this is proven false on a daily basis in emergency rooms everywhere.

You think we need to vigilantly protect pregnant girls from facing a lifetime of regret over an abortion? This is nothing compared to the lifetime of economic and emotional hell that is most often the result of a child’s pregnancy.