Letters to the Editor
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she doesn't need their permission to have a baby
Abortion is different, as many have pointed out, because the girl is pregnant and if if she doesn't have an abortion will have a baby. prenancy and hcildbirth are huge medical events -- much more significant medically than abortion -- yet she doesn't need to notify her parents about them! Why not? Moreover, a pregnant girl does not need parental notification/permission for any particular medical procedure relating to her pregnancy. She is the patient. So legally, if this measure passes, a girl will be old enough to have a baby without parental involvement but not old enough to choose abortion. Does that make sense, Adrienne?
The main result of parental notification will be that some girls will have babies who don't want them and can't cope, and many girls will have their abortions later in the pregnancy. Most girls do tell their parents -- the ones who don't, have a reason. Even if the reason is not what Adrienne So thinks is a good one, consider the alternative. Better a first trimester abortion without the parents knowledge than a second trimester one with, I say. These are very young girls we're talking about here -- they should have the earliest, least invasive procedure possible, not some two-day procedure that costs a lot of money her parents may well not have.
The idea of using parental notification to deter girls from having penetrative sex -- I dunno, it seems a high price to pay. Maybe we could just put a few in jail, or make them parade through town naked...
I'm pretty shocked that Adrienne So is willing to put underage girls through late abortions or childbirth to make a point about sex.
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What About Notfication of Minor Father's Parent?
Apparently, this law does not require that the parents of a minor father be notified prior to an abortion. If so, then why not? Can't a young man become wracked with guilt in later years if his fetus was aborted? Shouldn't his parents be forced to be a part of the decision making process as well? And shouldn't young men be subjected to the same potential for parental abuse as young women?
You call youself a feminist, yet you support a law that puts young women, and only young women, at risk of getting the crap beat out of them by an abusive parent or guardian.
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Obviously, this is all academic to you.
But here in the REAL world, REAL girls have their physical safety endangered by these law every day.
A good friend of mine works at an abortion provider, and part of her job is to take teens to court so a Judge can release them from the parental notification requirements.
The stories she tells would curl your hair; the incest victims, the girls trapped in physically abusive homes, the girls in foster care who fear being bounced from their foster homes if they tell.
What will you say to yourself, if this law passes, when the first couple of teenagers turn up horribly beaten or dead - because you didn't care about them, and just voted in a way that made YOU feel better, more in control.
Believe me, if this law passes, it will happen. Will you grieve for these girls? Will you THEN accept responsibility for your horribly mis-placed vote?
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Age of childhood going up
When my grandmother was 16, she was married, and had kids - plural. And she wasn't unusual. As the marriage age in the USA goes up, the age of childhood and laws forcing people to be children seem to go up (21 drinking?)
If my grandmother was mature enough to be married, have kids, and help my grandfather who wasn't much older run a farm, and jobs on the side.... how is it these poor modern 16 years old, are not capable of making their own medical decisions, when did we start infatizing teenageers so much?
In most countries they are adults, married working at this age, but we have artificially strung out childhood.
A sixteen year old will make decisions about sex regardless of what their parents think, and they should be the ones to decide if they are going to tell their parents about their decision about a pregnancy.
Soon we'll raise the age for drinking, driving, voting marriage to well over 21 (of course military will still be 18) because our aging population, and dwindling number of youths has set up a strange dynamic in this country.
Its time to look at your parents, when they got married, had kids, and your grandparents and then look at the silly trends of using our teenagers as a sheild to hide behind to pass morality laws to enforce a minorities religious believes on others, and at the same time, erode the rights of the young, never allowing them to grow up.
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Nope
As a woman who had an abortion as a teenager (without my parents' knowledge), I strongly disagree with Ms. So's stand on the issue. What about a teenager with anti-choice parents, who take extreme measures to prevent her terminating the pregnancy? By extreme measures, I don't mean violence. I mean any kind of coercion parents are capable of as controllers of the home, money, etc. To say that a teen still has the right to take the matter to court in order to proceed with her legal right to terminate is close to meaningless. I know that if my parents had been notified and if they had been dead-set against my abortion, I would not have had the strength or wherewithall to pursue legal avenues to assert my rights. I might have had a child far too young, as per the wishes of someone else, and had the power over my own destiny taken from me.
A minor rarely has the awareness, gumption, connections, and endurance to launch a court case to follow through on her desire to NOT bear a child too young in the face of staunch resistance from her guardians. But that she does not possess those things does not bolster the argument that she does not have the ability to know whether she's ready to have a baby. That's something a woman just knows. If she still "knows" after braving the protesters outside the clinic, going through the mandated counseling, and being informed of all the options by trained workers, then she knows. She knows. Leave her alone.