Please! This is a distinction without a difference. Children don’t (or shouldn’t) get to make decisions like this in virtually very other circumstance. You think it’s better that in this circumstance my child should get to decide. I’m not interested even slightly in whether you think it’s better for my child to be able to make this decision on her own rather than relying on her parents.
You keep saying you’re not interested in anyone’s opinion but your own. Why are you in this thread?
I’m interested in your opinion, though I disagree with it. And I do consider your views wildly hypocritical since you’re yelling at people for infringing on a privacy that you won’t allow women. You are free to, and possibly capable of, convincing me that it isn’t hypocrisy for you to act as if on the one hand you have a private decision to make for your daughter upon which no one can intrude and on the other hand I have a non-private decision to make for my body upon which everyone can intrude.
And do you defend parents who force abortions, yes or no? Are you permitted to have an opinion about their child?
And that compromise, in my view, is let the pregnant person decide from whom she wants to seek advice. Simple.
Maureen:
A position that would hold true for myriad other decisions that our society demands parents make on minor childrens’ behalf. Yet only abortion has people dead-set against the parental authority.
This is the nub of why the anti-abortion movement has taken up the banner of parental notification. Not because it would inherently significantly reduce the number of abortions performed. After all, as so many have pointed out, if the parents are given the authority, they may very well choose to abort. It’s because it paints the pro-abortion-rights movement into a position that seems absurd to defend. If they can make their opponents look irrational, they stand a better chance of having people move to their own position.
That quote of mine was in response to even sven’s statement that American society recognizes different ages of majority for different aspects of life. My point was that a different age of majority for abortion wasn’t what anti-parental-consent-laws folks were advocating, it was the complete denial of any recognition of minority for the issue. If I missed your particular position on that, I apologize.
Obviously, a one-age-fits all demarcation will fail for some people. But certainly, most (if not all) societies recognize that education and life experience accumulates to become wisdom, and that on a societal level, a threshhold must be set somewhere to ensure that important decisions, especially those of lasting significance, are made only by those who can be assumed to have achieved an adequate amount of it.
Barely Adequate:
And that, in and of itself, is a moral determination.
Correct. Prior to 14 years of age, “no.” The number of children under the age of 14 able to understand the risks involved to themselves and their unborn child is so small as to be non existent. I would go further to add that not only should a parent be consulted for girls younger than 14 who become pregnant, I’d like to see a social worker and a therapist involved as well. This may cause some hard feelings with some people, but if your child is pregnant at 13 or younger, there’s a problem there, and the child’s sexual activity is the result, not the cause.
No, that’s the way you choose to read my posts. I’ve repeated ad nauseum that I believe she should absolutely consult her parents. I just don’t believe it’s my responsibility to break confidentiality in order to ensure that will happen. As a medical professional, I’m taking myself out of the equation completely. It is between her and you. Had you read my posts to furt earlier, you would have seen that I support that for other medical procedures as well. If you and your daughter have a communication problem and you believe she has difficulty coming to you with hard issues, it’s up to you to fix it, not me.
I’ll try. Maybe I’ll still seem hypocritical to you. Perhaps I am. It’s a very emotional issue for me.
I believe that abortion is wrong because it kills an innocent human life. In that sense, it is not a private decision that affects no one but the mother. I wish that abortion were illegal and that there were viable alternatives for anyone considering it.
I also believe that it is a parent’s job to make important decisions for his children. Why? Children don’t have the judgment to do so for themselves. It our jobs as parents to protect them.
So, I can simultaneously hold that abortions are wrong and ought to be illegal while recognizing that legally you currently have the right to have one. Can you accept a scenario where abortions are acceptable and legal–and should be, from your perspective–but that legally and ethically a parent still has the right and duty to influence that situation?
Well, I never think that abortion is a moral choice. So, I can recognize the legal basis for allowing them to do so, but I can’t defend the practice. In a perfect world, parents could make all legal decisions for their children, and abortion would not be one.
Actually, I’ll admit to you that I didn’t read those particular posts at all. Sorry if I assigned a position to you you do not hold.
I think we are in 100% agreement (yay! We can close the thread now). The only thing I’d add to that is that I still tend to be in favor of parental notification for girls 14-16 or 17 (unless a mental health professional feels the child has a good reason not to).
Stratocaster, if you’re that against abortion, what if it was a health-threatening pregnancy? Or a rape?
Would you still deny your daughter her right to choose?
No.
I am perfectly capable of accepting that a person’s ethics might prevent them from having an abortion themselves, but will not ever accept a situation where they enforce that moral belief on someone else.
She may be your daughter, but I can’t see how that means her uterus is your property.
It’s an emotional issue for everyone. I don’t think there’s a single person who does not have a very firmly held opinion about it. But it’s a debate, not a shouting match. The whole point, or at least one of the points, is to get as many of the facts as possible and find if a consensus is possible by analyzing those facts.
See, I agree with that up to a point. I also believe it’s a parent’s job to teach their children how to make important decisions for themselves, and that it’s a process you start when that child is very young. Because eventually that parent isn’t going to be around. You send your child out into the world without decision making capability and then what? They have to learn all those skills on their own, and usually the repercussions are far worse. To me, that’s a big part of what responsible parenting is all about. And I will now quit this hijack.
You didn’t answer the question. You hold that you are have the right to force your underage child to bear a child. Do you acknowledge that, by this logic, another parent has the right to force their child to have an abortion?
I’m not sure notification does not equal consent.
Well, it doesn’t if its post facto, that’s for sure.
Nor am I. Notification *before * the procedure allows the parent the opportunity to prevent it. Notification *after * the procdedure seems pointless.
Stratocaster, if you believe that you should have the legal right to prevent your daughter from having an abortion, what other rights and responsibilities do you believe follow from that? Do you have the right to force her to keep the baby? Do you have the right to force her to give it away? If she keeps the baby, whether by your choice or hers, what do you believe your legal responsibilities to her child should be?
Not for rape. If death was imminent and abortion could save my daughter, yes.
I believe I did answer the question. I recognize the legal basis for it. I have no position to demand that they not do it. I also assert that abortion is a de facto evil that ought to be illegal, so that we’re not in the odd position of defending the legality of having an immoral act performed. (I use these adjectives to clarify my position; I understand others do not hold this.) If someone wants a simple yes or no to a complex question in the interest of being able to respond with a “gotcha!,” sorry I can’t oblige.
Stratocaster, I understand your position, but please understand mine. If parental notification is required, even with a judicial work around, one direct consequence I can see is that there will be some teenage girls who will choose to commit suicide rather than tell their parents. Abusive situations happen. I know because I grew up in one. Maybe it’s the earliness of the hour or what talking so frankly about my past yesterday conjured up, but, I get the impression that,while you have a great deal of compassion for innocent, unborn babies, you have little or none for teenage girls who don’t have good relationships with their parents and who are, in fact, afraid of them and with good reason.
My father’s a good man, at heart, and he never intended to do the damage he did. Nevertheless, I would have committed suicide for the reasons I mentioned yesterday. This may be an unfair characterization and this is an emotion-charged issue, but I gather the life of a scared, abused kid is worth less to you than an unborn baby. The reason I’m reacting this way is because I was a scared, abused kid who’s dead lucky an unscrupulous man didn’t do more to her than just fondle her.
With respect, even if it may not look that way,
CJ
Siege, I am asking you this question in good faith, and I apologize in advance if it seems insensitive:
How can one be willing to die, yet be unwilling to allow herself injury (if facing parental abuse) or embarrassment (if facing a judge)?
One can, quite simply, be driven to the point where she believes she is too stupid, useless, worthless, and hopeless to live, that indeed, she does not deserve life.
That wasn’t what my father intended. Nevertheless, it’s the way I lived many years of my life and it’s a feeling against which I still have to guard myself.
With regret,
CJ
And if by “prevent it” you mean “convince her it isn’t the best choice” what in the world is wrong with that unless you’re not pro-choice but pro-abortion? If you mean “lock her in a room for nine months,” we have laws against that.
Adoption, for example is a very viable choice that teenagers, especially younger ones, may not consider without guidance; and it is very unlikely that they will start to consider it after birth.
And to repeat: nobody here is advocating parental involvement if there is a reasonable suspicion that the parents will be abusive.
Only if you believe that having an abortion and keeping it a secret from the most important people in your life will have absolutely no emotional, psychological or medical consequences.