Letters to the Editor
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a poor case
This is the best case So could compose? Seriously, after all the qualifiers "I'm a feminist..." what we get is a poor case indeed:
-parents aren't required to provide consent for all medical procedures. This is one of So's first and most compelling claims. AND IT IS WRONG. This is a basic argumentation skill that most people perfect in Freshman comp.
-suggesting that parents will react to their daughter's pregnancy with 'grounding them'. This can't be serious.
-completely ignoring the high rates of sexual abuse occuring within the family
The young women of the state of California deserved a better articulation of what possibly could be a reasonable argument to support this measure. Unfortunately, So doesn't provide it.
One important point that another poster brought up to support the measure is that teens are stressed when their pregnant. I agree it is probably a stressful, if not traumatic time. However, I also think that parents are also likely to experience some stress. Asking parents to see their *children* as not only sexual beings, but potential parents must be stressful. I'm sure some parents handle it well, but I think a simple equation of parents=calm rational and pregnant teen=irration is simplistic at best.
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A Male point of view on abortion
If a parent made a decision, based on parental notification that the child would have the baby, she'd be required by law to make adult decisions about it from the moment it was born, and in California would become an emancipated minor immediately: She would be regarded by the state as an adult, regardless of her age or maturity.
Beyond that, emotionally, Adrienne So's piece is very strange. That's what I kept saying to myself after I read it. It took me a while to put my finger on it. I know about the discrepancy between the matter of fact handling of abortions and the soul wrenching grief that happens other times.
I had a girlfriend once that got pregnant just after we had broken up. It's possible it was someone else, but most likely I was the father (do you still call it father if the baby never happened?). Every logical argument pointed to abortion, and that is what transpired. My ex-girlfriend was able to deal with it as a matter of fact, hard but necessary part of life. For some reason, I was not. I was inconsolable. I ranted. Friends of mine told me that I didn't smile or laugh for months, I wrote music about a lost period of time in my life, when I didn't quite know what had gone on -- even while I did in fact live my life out every day, study, go to school, go to work and all that.
I remember feeling like I should have gotten a choice. After all, if she had decided to keep the child, I would have been in for 20 years of support, after all, I was the father, equally responsible for the pregnancy and the lack of birth control, after all...
I had a million arguments as I went through my stages of grief, not even knowing why it hit me so hard.
In the end it can't be that way. A man can't have a codified role in the decision to terminate a pregnancy, some men would abuse that role, and what do you do with a 1-1 vote? In the end, there are facts. The facts are that the man will feel pain, the facts are that the man will feel helpless, the facts are that it can't happen any other way.
This is also, in the end, what Adrienne So needs to learn. Parents can't have a codified role in a decision to terminate a pregnancy for the same reason that the father of the child cannot. And notification that seems so benign to her could result in someone being beaten, even in someone dying in a bad family. So parents, like fathers, must just deal with the fact that they can't always be involved in every decision that affects them.
Because they have to respect the rights of someone else.
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Telling Parents
Even now,as a 30-year-old single woman, I can not imagine telling my parents that I got pregnant by accident. No, they wouldn't beat me or throw me out of the house. I just wouldn't want to deal with their reaction--whatever that might be. Thank goodness I'm an adult and don't don't have to tell them. It's hard to imagine what would have happened if I got pregant as a teenager.
There's a fairly decent article on this topic at PalmBeachPost.com called "Teenage abortion waivers not rare."
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So forced abortions?
If parents are the ones who truly know what's in their child's best interest, then shouldn't they be allowed to force a minor to have an abortion against her will?
So far, I've yet to hear a pro-notification argument that adequately addresses this corrollary. It's how you can be certain that it's a anti-woman proposal in psuedo-"Feminist for Life" terminology.
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Let's make more laws assuming every father is a rapist
. . . .
I mean that's the point against parental notification, right? We ought to make a law that assumes the father raped the daughter and is a pro-life zealot who will beat her for even bringing up the idea of an abortion.
You know who else makes laws assuming every man/father is a rapist? The Taliban.
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Many posters to this article
make good points about parental notification laws. Yes, it may be silly to try to legislate what a girl tells or doesn't tell her parents. Yes, many judges interpret the bypass provisions in weird and arbitrary ways. Yes, the notification requirement may make girls give parents information they're not responsible enough to deal with.
All of these things and more can be true, but all miss the salient point - this is a political issue and pro-choice people must address it as such. Since Casey, virtually every abortion law is a political - not a constitutional - issue. The fact that the aforesaid points have some validity does not mean that they sell to the average voter and that's who you need to appeal to. Pro-choice people need to learn how to do politics (the way they did in SD this year), because that is where the fight is.
You can be Simon-pure and lose every round or you can do the hard work of lobbying state legislatures, putting referendums on the ballot, etc. If you do the latter, abortion rights will not be what you might like them to be, but a certain core will be preserved.
And that's as well as pro-choice can do at this point.