cmkeller:
Which they should be allowed to do, IMHO.
(preferably not simultaneously though)
Fair enough.
I think it’s a good idea, for the reasons I’ve expressed above.
We live in a country in which citizens may have different, even diametrically opposed, views of what constitutes good and bad ideas, and we have a system for resolving those debates and figuring out which one gets made into law.
So far, I’m happy to see that on this narrow issue of notifications, my idea seems to be the one that has taken the lead.
The difference being of course, that parents don’t give their children cancer or liver failure or acne.
If a parent decides to refuse permission for a child to have medical treatment, then as far as I remember, legal action must be taken to reverse that decision. Now, given that you have said elsewhere in the thread that you think there is only notification to parents, not decision makign authority, you can see that the law does treat abortion differently from these other forms of medical treatment. The only question is how differently it should treat it.
Im still intrigued as to why you feel a parent morally has the right to interfere in their child’s decisions once the child has achieved an age they can make that decision. I might possibly agree with you that it is a legally enforceable right, but I think you are hard pushed to justify a requirement to notify the parent of a 17 years and 364 day old girl of her decision to terminate a pregnancy, but not if she arrives at the clinic one day later.
As an aside, do you think these laws have anything whatsoever to do with parental rights, or do you not think they might be part of a salami tactic attempt to reduce abortion?
I’m not so sure they do. What I do see many people do is to start from what they consider to be a moral position, and try to move the process into alignment with the moral position. The ends don’t justify the means, in other words, but nor do the means justify the ends: they try to get the means (the legal process) into alignment with the ends (the moral outcome).
From what I see, you tend to think that the means (the constitutional process) does justify the ends (whatever outcome this process leads to). I disagree with that position.
I disagree here as well. While we may end up at an impasse–if one of us works from preferential utilitarianism, for example, while the other one does whatever the neighbor’s dog tells us to do–more often we can, through debate, figure out what our common assumptions are, and try to build on those.
While the legal process is interesting to me as an academic exercise, I do not see it as a noble end. I’d make a crappy attorney in this respect. Instead, the legal process is one way to reach a moral end; to the extent that it does not do so, I’ve got a duty not to follow it.
Daniel
I, for one, am more interested in the fact that these parents are so negligent that they don’t even tell her she’s allergic to one of the most common antibiotics in existence. (FTR, I’m allergic to amoxicillin, and I’ve known it since kindergarten. The only way I could not have known is if my parents had lied to me about what caused the blotches on my skin after I took it.)
Are they planning to tell her on her 18th birthday, or will she have to find out the hard way the first time she goes to the doctor as an adult and receives penicillin? Why should her parents be given any influence over her choice to have an abortion if they’re going to put their own desire for control above their daughter’s health?
Same thing that happens if an adult lies or forgets about the medication she’s on. All the more reason to be honest with your doctor.
Yes, that’s tragic. And quite debatable. But in this case, no one knows better than the girl in question whether she should have an abortion.
I would hope it’s the same person that’d be held liable if she were an adult. If you’re concerned about the doctor or parents being held liable, I suggest pushing for that to be legally changed, not for a patient’s parents to be brought into the process against her will.
Allow me to back up your claim with this cite. The threat of abusive parents may be equaled or even become outweighed by the threat of accidental (or neglected) serious injury/death of the girl/women obtaining the abortion.
Because some of you believe that parents shouldn’t be notified of a daughter’s abortion because they might be abusive, then how will you address that each daughter can also sustain serious injury and even death when obtaining an abortion and those same parents have to seek medical care (if they are even aware of her complications) for her? After all, they are her parents, who else will (or be allowed to) do it?
This a problem that both sides are unable to honestly address.
If parental notification is required for abortion because the parents should know about their children’s health, it seems it must also be required for STD treatment, or prescription birth control.
It seems to me I’ll accept whatever I want to. I can recognize the legal status of cases like Lambert v. Wicklund without agreeing with their moral conclusions just as much as you can wail about Roe v. Wade.
That said, I can’t help but wonder why you think that the Supreme Court is granting cert to review whether or not strict parental notification laws are constitutionally permissible, if you think Lambert v. Wicklund has settled that question. If Lambert v. Wicklund settled the legal issue of whether or not “judicial bypass” provided sufficient relief from the “undue burden” referred to in Planned Parenthood v. Casey…which does seem to be the case…then why would the Supreme Court bother reopening the issue just to say parental notification laws are constitutional if they already said so back in 1997?
Your link goes to a right wing, nutbag, propoganda website. Abortions are actually quite safe these days and any minor complications can be easily dealt with by the medical personel on sight. Sorry, no sale here. You have not provided an argument for ratting girls out to abusive parents, nor have you addressed the fact that imposing such a threat on these kids will drive them to make less safe choices.
You are the one making claims here ** Digoenes ** and have provided absolutely nothing to back them up with. Where is the evidence that girls will chose unsafe abortions or that many minors’ parents will abuse them for having an abortion?
Only if the judiciary and judicial nominees are willing to set aside their personal preferences in favor of stare decisis, a quality rather lacking among the current crop of judicial activists.
That actually raises a very interesting point, Gaudere, and one that I do not believe I have ever seen argued in any of the parental notification/consent (“PN/C”) cases. That is, PN/C laws single out a constitutionally-enshrined right to medical treatment for PN/C, while leaving all (or virtually all) other medical treatments totally immune from PN/C. I think a persuasive legal argument could be built around the notion that a state can require PN/C for medical treatment of minors generally, but that it cannot single out constitutionally-protected abortion/reproductive rights for such barriers.
Gaudere:
Is that not in fact true?
Mr 2001:
Perhaps they were going to tell her the first time they feel they can send her to a doctor on her own. Most kids’ - even teenagers’ - parents generally accompany them to doctor visits, the better to ensure that the doctor’s care instructions are properly conveyed and followed.
Or perhaps they did tell her, but she didn’t remember the details, as children, who don’t necessarily understand the import of certain facts, often do.
Can you really not think of any reason other than being control freaks that parents would rather they instead of a minor be in charge of administering that child’s health?
Except that an adult has (one hopes) gained enough education and life experience to make the intelligent decision, whereas a minor is more likely short-sighted decisions. Teenagers are notorious for living in the moment and feeling invincible.
Unless it’s a case of rape, the fact that she got pregnant when she was in no position to have a baby indicates that her judgement is very much deficient.
At this point in time, minors are generally not considered to be responsible for their own actions. Case in point, a (supposedly) consensual sexual relationship between an adult and a minor is considered statutory rape. Why then should the law consider them fully responsible and liable for their own medical care decisions?
History.
Why don’t we look at the history of minors making stupid decisions? It is also my understanding that the problem of women dying from back alley abortions was largely a myth.
So, what protections are we offering minors who make the stupid decision to continue the pregnancy? Surely we need an equivalent protection for the children in that case so concerned parents can step in and show these short-thinking young people the err of their ways and ensure they recieve the safe legal abortions they should in these situations.
If we can’t offer equal protection to both those girls who make the stupid decision ot carry to term and those who make the stupid decision to abort, such an argument is less than compelling… and begins to appear merely as a front to justify preventing minors from acquiring an abortion.
Of course, the unspoken assumption of the “protect them from stupid decisions” argument is that choosing abortion can be nothing but a stupid decision and to continue the pregnancy nothing but a good decision. Thus neatly ignoring the issue as actually framed, and continuing the purpose of making it evermore difficult for women to procure a legal abortion.
No that is not the unspoken assumption and I resent the implication you are making here.
What protections do you want us to offer for those girls? Passing a law requiring children to inform their parents before they pass the first trimester that they are pregnant won’t do anything. Nor would it be right or accomplish anything to punish them for failing to do so.
You are operating under the assumption that all parents will force their children to carry the child to term rather than abort. Deciding whether to have an abortion or carry the child to term is a big decision, certainly the biggest in these young girls lives. As such the parents should be informed and have a hand in the decision making process.
The parents have no right whatsoever to make that choice for their children. It is still her body and that’s all there is to it. No one would suggest that parents should have the right to force their daughters to get abortions against their will, and allowing parents to force their daughters to bear children against their will is just as vile a prospect.
I’ve made no secret that my father was emotionally abusive to me when I was a teenager and, while Dad and I get on fine these days, that abuse left scars. I think I might be able to offer a bit of perspective on parental notification.
If I’d gotten pregnant while I was in high school, I would have been afraid to tell my parents. I’m reasonably sure that if it had been anything been anything but the most blatant and obvious type of rape, Dad’s firs reaction would have been to ask what I did to provoke it. Things would not have been pleasant. Here’s a bit of confirming evidence. Years after I graduated, Dad and I were talking about a talk show about girls who’d gotten pregnant in high school. He said to me, “You don’t really think I would have thrown you out of the house if you’d gotten pregnant, do you?” I replied, “Dad, you would have threatened to!” I would have believed the threat. With my admittedly limited teenage perspective, faced with the prospect of being thrown and disowned, if I’d been gotten pregnant, I would have sought an abortion or attempted suicide. Remember, folks, I’d attempted suicide for the first time at 14 or 15 and my family hadn’t done anything even when it became very public knowledge and my father chose to do nothing when I was molested at 16. That’s why I cannot bring myself to support parental notification laws.
Bricker, Jonathan Chance, Diogenese, I’m sure you all have wonderful relationships with your daughters and can’t picture it being any other way. treis, the only reason I didn’t include you in that list is because I can’t remember whether you have children. I agree that in an ideal world children should be able to tell their parents about things and a child shouldn’t be afraid of what would happen if her parents found out she needed an abortion. Then again, in my ideal world, there would be no need for abortion. This isn’t one. It isn’t just girls who were impregnated by their own fathers who need protection; it’s nice, respectable girls who are trying to have a good relationship with their fathers, despite the interference of their own faults and history.
I don’t like writing what I have about my father; I’ve made my peace with him and I really do love him dearly. I also know what things were like for me as a teenager.
Respectfully,
CJ
Sure, I agree. And yet Bowers v. Hardwick lies in the ashes of overturned law…