If one is in the majority, you know that the legislature will ensure your freedoms. If you are in the minority, you need the judiciary to save you from the tyranny of the majority.
Comparable in terms of the magnitude of the responsibilities, no.
However, the only reason Bricker has given for imposing this burden on young pregnant girls is that the parents deserve the right to be informed in return for the responsibility they assume in raising the child. However, it is precisely in the case where parents abuse those responsibilities that children need protection from the burden Bricker would impose. Just as the Supreme Court has ruled that it is precisely in the case where husbands abuse their responsibilities towards their wives that wives need protection from the burden that spousal notification laws would impose. And however greater the magnitude of parental responsibility may be, that just makes the abuse of that responsibility that much more heinous.
Can I also disagree that majoritarianism is the ultimate goal of our Constitution or the government?
Did anyone say it was? The ultimate goal of our constitution is to secure freedom for the citizenry.
Right. Which is why the law at issue has a judicial by-pass, permitting a minor whose notification of her parents would create a potential for abuse to get an abortion without notifying her parents.
That’s it? That’s your answer? Could I impose on you to offer something more in the way of a response than pure hand waving.
So it appears. Checks and balances and individual liberties, all that sort of stuff.
It’s awfully easy to feel self-righteous. You just have to peremptorily dismiss any concern that could undermine it as being baseless, and presto, you’re right.
ISTM that the very act of going before a judge would be a pretty high emotional barrier for a scared kid, even one who doesn’t have to sneak away furtively to do it - enough in many cases to make less-safe options seem attractive, even if she knows they’re less safe.
Nonsense – parental responsibility to a child (who is incapable of full adult independent judgement) is considerably more comprehensive than spousal responsibility toward another (outside the special case of mental incapacity) adult.
Requiring a the young girl in question, who hasn’t committed any crime, to go in front of a judge and defy those abusive parents. An act which forces her to go against all of the conditioning said parents have probably heaped on her for her entire life. I’m not nearly as sanguine as you are that this is sufficiently less of a burden on the young girl in question.
See my response to beagledave. Again, I’m not suggesting that the two responsibilities are comparable in magnitude. I’m am suggesting, however, that the fact that parental responsibility is greater means we should be more apprehensive about laws that place onerous burdens disproportionately on children whose parents have abused that greater responsibility. If the court’s views on spousal notification laws recognize how the burden of such laws falls primarily on women whose husbands ignore their responsibilities, why can’t they recognize that parental notification laws have a similar disproportionate effect?
(And count me among those who suspect the judgement of the minor would never be an issue if the minor wanted to carry a baby to term in defiance of the parents’ wishes.)
Diogenes, don’t you see ANY problems with letting minors get a medical procedure without their parents’ knowledge? What if, for example, a kid has a penicillin allergy - something her parents probably know about but she may very well be blissfully unaware of, her parents having handled every other prior medical transaction in her life - and she gets some sort of infection at a perfectly reputable, non-back-alley abortion clinic? Or she’s taking some sort of medication that would interact badly with something they give her at the clinic (I don’t know the ins and outs of abortion procedures, but I imagine there must be anesthesia of some sort involved in surgical ones, and who knows what if the clinic uses RU-486 for inducing the abortion), and she forgets to mention it…or intentionally declines to mention it, because she’s afraid they won’t do the abortion if she cops to being on some sort of medication?
Teenagers are not generally considered, in American society, to be rational thinkers (otherwise, we’d likely let them vote, drive, drink and smoke). Shouldn’t there be some sort of adult supervising this minor’s care, from a purely medical standpoint? Who’s going to be held liable if something goes wrong with the procedure, and it could have been prevented if the doctors had better knowledge of the girl’s medical history?
I feel for any poor girl who suffers parental abuse as either a cause of or result of her pregnancy, terminated or otherwise. But worries about a girl’s health can be equally valid for having NOT notified. And certainly abusive parents are the exception rather than the rule.
Well, I’m not as sanguine as YOU that the right to an abortion should be guaranteed by the federal constitution. But I accept that Roe v. Wade establishes that it is, and that this determination is binding.
Similarly, Lambert v. Wicklund establishes that parental notification, with a judicial bypass exception, is not constitutionally infirm.
It seems to me that if you accept one, you must accept the other.
Not really, because we do not accept the same premises. You have a very absolutist view that abortion is a civil right, and even a minor is entitled to exercise that right without involving her parents. I have an equally absolutist view that abortion should not be viewed as a civil right at all, much less one exercised by a minor with no parental involvement. These amount to postulates on both our sides, items accepted as givens.
In addition to the debate about the actual merits of such a law, I’m curious as to what folks here think of the political ramifications of such a law.
I’m guessing most major Republican politicians would support parental notification with a judicial bypass…but it does have some bi partisan support as well, hell even Hillary Clinton is on board.
The American public seems to favor notification by a significant majority (78% in one poll http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,154805,00.html other polls that I’ve seen have results at 70% or more) This is not to say that polling justifies judicial or legislative decisions, but to provide a context for the discussion of the politics of this decision.
Are there major active Democratic politicians who will actively speak out against it?
Does a public debate about this issue favor one party over the other?
Bricker, does it seem to you that you conflate “legally binding” and “morally binding” more than other folks on the board do? Because it seems that way to me.
Your last sentence seems neither objectionable nor relevant to me.
Daniel
None of this has anything to do with my question. I asked you if you were concerned that the threat of parentical notification would cause some minors to seek more deperate options. Is it your position that they won’t do that, or are you saying you just don’t care if they do? If your position is the former, how do you know? If your position is the latter, then you lose all moral credibility.
By the way, my “postulate” has a Supreme Court ruling behind. It is in fact, a current civil right and the law of the land.
One more thing. Bricker, I haven’t said that parental notification is unconstitutional, only that the right to abortion is. I just think Parental Notification is a bad idea. I’m not making a constitutional argument against it.
I believe other folks on this board use the terms interchangably and without rigor, Daniel.
I dislike debating the moral correctness of a position, because there is no moral authority that you and I both accept as binding. If I say it’s immoral to keep excess change handed back to you from a Walmart chasier, and someone else says its perfectly moral because Walmart screws people all the time, there is no way to resolve the discrepancy. I have a Big Book o’ Moral Codes, and perhaps you do, too, but they are not the same. Ultimately, any discussion of the morality of a subject, without first agreeing on a common standard, will end with gratuitous assertions.
The issue of “legally binding” is - while not without its own pitfalls - at least somewhat amenable to ultimate resolution.
I don’t believe that the threat of parental notification will cause a dramatic upsurge in minors seeking more desperate options. I acknowledge it may happen, but highly infrequently. I do not accept that standard you’ve offered that “even once is too many” a consequence, and should cause the law to be scuttled.
How do I know it will be highly infrequent? Because there are jurisdictions that HAVE parental notificartion laws now, and I’m not aware of any studies showing “desperate options” are used significantly more in them tha in other jurisdictions.