Parental consent for a minor to undergo an abortion is one of the issues deeply dividing our country. I understand the argument against it – a chief one being that a teenage girl could get beaten up by her father when she tells him that his little angel is not only having sex, but got pregnant – but I really can’t see any good reason for it. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Adam
Parent has a right to know sorta thing, perhaps?
Doesn’t work for me, but I would imagine that’s the other team’s stance.
Isn’t it just the underlying assumption that minors cannot give reliable, informed consent for themselves? If not universal, I would have thought this holds true for medical procedures; parental consent is required for an appendectomy, why would it be any different for an abortion?
I understand you’re just explaining the defense of the pro-consent side, but do they really feel that a parent’s supposed right to know outweighs the risk of a teenage girl getting abused by a parent?
Adam
I’m a liberal, but this is my feeling on the issue. I think we need to treat abortion like any other medical procedure (might as well piss of fthe left and right at the same time). Minors need permission to get piercings and tatoos, I think abortions are at least as serious. Loopholes for cases of abusive parents make sense.
Here is my understanding of the arguments:
We live in a country where teenagers cannot have Midol at school without express adult permission. Abortion is the only medical procedure that does not involve parental consent for minors. Why should that be?
Then, abortion is a serious surgical procedure, which can have life-threatening complications. As with any surgery, someone needs to be caring for anyone who has just gone through an abortion, to provide comfort and help, and watch for problems. Girls have died from post-abortion bleeding or infections that no one knew about.
The arguments against parental consent treat abortion as an exception to all normal rules. Parental consent for abortion treats it in like other surgeries.
Depends on if you make the assumptions that:
#1 I think is fine without further comment, but #2, indeed, there are many people who will read things like “Baby left in dumpster to die” and it gets immediately purged, holding no reality for them. Either that or I’m just cynical.
DangerMom’s argument sounds much better than mine as an actual platform. Probably better to assume that as the thing to debate.
Strikes me as inappropriate and absurd to react to fears of violent reprisal from an abusive parent by performing an abortion without consent and just sending the girl home.
If it’s genuinely the case that the parent is violent and abusive, that’s a whole problem that needs promptly dealing with all by itself, by different methods.
Against: I would just add that another problem typically raised by pro-choice advocates is in cases of incest. The girl will have to inform her father who impregnated her.
For: I’m no expert - but I think the argument goes like this: Abortion is a huge decision. A massive decision that (in some people’s opinion) kills another human being. Minors cannot and should not make the decision to undertake this procedure alone. They should speak to someone and weigh their options. And that someone should be the person who has legal authority over them - and provides guidance in their development - their parents. It’s a perfectly normal requirement. No doctor, for example, would perform a steriliziation procedure or breast augmentation on a minor without parental involvement. Why should abortion be any different?
Moreover, the counterargument to the pro-choice (no consent necessary) position is that there is typically a judicial exception to parental consent laws. If the father / mother is abusive or the pregnancy was caused by incest - the minor can go before a judge and request to have the abortion granted without parental consent/notification. There is also typically an emergency exception as well - meaning that parental consent/notification will not be required if the abortion is immediately necessary to save the life of the mother.
That, to my understanding, is the argument.
I imagine some of them do believe that the supposed risk of abuse does not outweigh a parents right to know when their daughter is going through a medical procedure of some sort. I happen to subscribe to that school of thought myself though just barely. Do you have any evidence, not anecdotal tales, but actual evidence on the number of girls abused when they reveal their pregnancy to their parents? If the state makes the decision to give these girls the procedure then I suspect they’re also liable for malpractice, complications, etc. that might arise from the procedure, correct?
You may not agree with the other side but do you really have no idea as to their point of view? If not, then you haven’t really taken a good look at the issue I think.
Marc
And…considering it, I would probably view the likelihood of medical complications to be greater than that the mother will happen to have an abusive homecoming. No figures, just a gut feeling.
Put me down on the side of Parental Consent for the moment.
Is this true. When I read my voters pamphlet for the recent California election it said
It’s different because of the stigma of abortion in our culture. A child having an appendectomy won’t cause family problems. A teenage pregnancy will.
Perhaps a better solution is for the girl’s doctor to outline all of the potential risks of the procedure. If she still wants it, the doctor should be required to ask how her parents would react if they found out. If he or she feels that the girl is in danger, he/she could sign off to have the abortion performed without the parent’s consent.
Adam
Err… isn’t this likely to become easily available, common knowledge, and lead to a rash of teens lying to their doctors?
It doesn’t really matter how the parents will react. It is not always that the parents are abusive beforehand. There are parents out there who are not really abusive before being put in an extreme situation, but upon finding out their child is making a major life decision that goes against what they, the parents believe, act extremely. I once helped out a guy whose parents freaked out when he got a girl pregnant, because she was blind and he wanted to marry her. They forged his signature to withdraw him from college. Fortunately, we were able to convince the school that the signatures were forged before they processed them. His parents tried to abduct him more than once. He thought they were going to institutionalize him until he agreed to do as they wanted. These were not religous zealots or extremists. They were professionals and had good standing in the community. BTW he married the girl and they have several children. He graduated too.
Some parents would treat a girl getting pregnant as sign that she is too stupid to be anything significant and choose not to pay to send her to college. Some would refuse consent even if the pregnancy were the result of rape. Many girls have chosen to die rather than face their parents to tell them. It doesn’t matter if the parents would react well or not in those cases; they were never given a chance.
The argument is that this is a surgery like any other and should be treated rationally as if it were. It isn’t.
We used to allow parents to sterilize their children on similar reasoning. We thought again on that and now generally we don’t allow it.
The argument really is that some kids won’t ask*, some parents won’t give, and some parents can’t be contacted in time, thus less abortions.
That sounds like really mealy mouthed and deceptive language (not by you gazpacho). My reading of that is “it used to be OK for minors to get pregnancy related treatment without parental consent, but over time that grew to include abortions, at which time another law was passed to restrict it”
Questions for those that would deny parental consent:
Why is there an assumption that the parent will be irrational, abusive, etc.?
Why is a school/teacher banned from giving students sunscreen (it’s considered medicine) yet a doctor can give a minor an abortion?
Why would a major decision such as an abortion not need parental permission whereas parental permission is needed on all other major decisions the minor may make?
Since the minor is obviously mature enough to make a decision about an abortion, are they mature enough to be automatically emancipated if the parent wants it (i.e. thrown out of the house)?
Why is this discussion limited to abortions? Why not allow minors to join the military without parental consent?
How would you explain to a parent that their daughter bled out on the table due to a botched abortion they knew nothing about?
Why deny parents the right to have the daughter receive religious counseling if her immortal soul may be at stake? (Admittedly this one assumes that abortion is a sin which is a whole other thread.)
If a parent knew their daughter was pregnant, wouldn’t that help them to realize that they need to control her behavior better so that she does not start using abortion as birth control?
Answer them in any order you want.
Ummmm . . . what? The sterilization laws were based on eugenics and social Darwinism and were limited to the disabled, almost exclusively under state conservatorship. I highly doubt that you would have ever found a reputable doctor who would sterilize a minor simply at a parent’s request.
Secondly, your analogy is backwards. Parental consent would allow parents to deny a medical treatment. Forced sterilization allowed others to force a person to have a medical treatment. The analogy would be apropros if we were arguing that a parent be allowed to force their daughter to have an abortion.