This is what I ask. I have a [now adult] daughter, but what I’d like to know is; why is it assumed that an adult can’t be trusted to act appropriately in cases like this, but a minor child can be???
In the absence of any hard facts, for every suddenly-abusive parent you baldly posit, I can baldly counter a suddenly-loving one - what about all those imaginary girls who would find that their parents are supportive in a way that makes a big difference to the outcome? If you get to build your argument on speculation, so do I.
No, it isn’t surgery like any other; it’s considerably more risky than some other surgical procedures, it also tends to require a different kind of post-operative care and support to some other surgical procedures. Perhaps the question should be: if you’re right, why should this be this the only exception?
For one thing the ramifications of a minor being denied autonomy in this instance make it neccesary to treat it differently. Having a child of your own is a decision that will impact you for at LEAST the next 18 years. A 17.5 year old who gives birth against her will because her parents denied consent for an abortion will be dealing with the consequences until at least her mid thirties. This does not seem even remotely fair to me and I don’t see how any pro-choice person could support this result merely to obtain a rigid “conformity” with other practices (midol at school, note they can still buy it over the counter on their own time…).
Ok, so requiring parental consent is out (for me at least). What about parental notification? I think the ONLY thing those laws are meant to accomplish is to intimidate teenagers into not having an abortion. Because if they don’t require consent but require notification, WHY does a teen girl need to tell her parents of her decision? What does that accomplish? If a girl doesn’t want to tell her parents there’s probably a reason for it. The pro-lifers are hoping that the total hardass pro-life segment of parents will threaten their teens with disownment and banishment/cutting off college funds/whatever in order to compel the teen to not have an abortion but still have that “choice” on paper.
Because some are.
Because schools are infected with zero tolerance stupidity.
Because parents are more likely to be violent on this issue, and because there is no “safe” path. Either she gets an abortion or has a baby; both are irrevocable. With a tatoo, for example, the parent at most is delaying her choice until adulthood; in this matter, there is no passive, do-nothing option.
Because abortion is a special case, due to the violence and irrationality of it’s opponents.
Having an abortion is safer than pregnancy and childbirth; you’ve just argued in favor of abortion.
Because believe in a soul is irrational, and not a good basis for any arguement.
If she’s scared to talk to them without government control, perhaps that “control” will consist of beating or murdering her.
No, tens of thousands were sterilized simply because they were poor, not disabled. I recall an interview with one victim years ago, who was healthy for her age and who’s idea of fun was doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. That doesn’t sound disabled to me.
What if the judge says no ? I recall a case some years ago, where a girl was molested by her father and forced her to ask her father for an abortion; he murdered her. That is the inevitable result of these kind of laws, given the brutality of many who oppose abortion. You will note that it’s pro-choice people being killed, not the anti-choice fanatics.
The woman leading the campaign in Illinois against parental consent and notification laws is a mother whose daughter killed herself rather than face her. The mother believes that she would have acted with understanding and support.
We allowed children to be sterilized at their parents choice not because of a belief in eugenics, but because children were considered their parents property and they had the right to do with their property as they saw fit; parents had the right to deny or force a surgery so long as they could get a doctor to perfom it. Eugenics may have been the reason doctors agreed to do the surgery.
It is utterly useless to discuss birth control as a way to avoid dealing with abortion. Birth control and responsible behavior should be encouraged, but always there will be birth control failures, as well as cases where birth control was not used, sometimes because teens are horny and stupid, sometimes because someone could not bother with that or obtaining consent. We should endeavor to reduce unwanted pregnancy rates by encouraging responsible behavior, but sometimes people are irresponsible. Date rape drugs are a major problem. Do you think someone who drugs his partner rather than wait for consent is likely to bother with birth control?
If a parent can deny a girl an abortion, then another parent can force a girl to have one.
You don’t even have to look at extreme cases like forced sterliziation. Parents force their kids to have medical procedures all the time, so abortion would be no different.
Somehow forcing a seven year old to get braces seems a whole lot less wrong to me than forcing a 15 year old to have an abortion.
I’ve been here. And I was 20, and legally old enough.
Look, if you’re going to come down on the side of Parental Consent, you then must also come down strongly on the side of teaching sex education - clear, unambiguous, in schools. We can’t seem to wrap our heads around the fact that teens will and do have sex. We’d rather teach them abstinence and no warnings at all about the consequences of sex, and then flip out and throw a conniption fit when they catch pregnant.
It can’t just be one way.
One more thing.
The amount of people who think abusive, angry parents don’t exist or are few and far-between astound me. The SDMB is a bubble, filled (apparently) with kind, loving parents. It isn’t like that IRL.
We still have this pressure on our teenage girls to be virgins. Ergo, there’s pressure on the fathers to keep them that way. Ignorance can’t be wiped out that easily, especially since no one’s teaching! So you have all these fathers who are ready to guard their daughter’s virginity and yet soon as they find out she’s lost it, they flip out.
We need to kill that idea of our daughter’s purity before parental consent becomes viable.
It does seem that way.
Braces represent months and months of painful treatment which provides nothing more than pretty teeth. This, we can shove down a kid’s throat and feel OK about it.
Not getting an abortion could be a bad, life changing, decision by someone too young to understand the consequences, yet we feel it is inappropriate for a parent to overrule the child. It sort of creeps me out that a girl as young as 12-13 could be 100% on her own to decide what to do in a situation this important, and we encourage it.
On the one hand, it would seem to be a good idea for a young girl to get support and advice from her family. OTOH, parents are not always supportive, which can make things worse.
I don’t doubt that angry, abusive violent parents exist, I just happen to think that keeping an abortion secret from them constitutes glossing over a problem. If they’re likely to get angry, abusive and violent when they learn that their teenage daughter is pregnant, how are they going to react if they somehow instead learn that she got pregnant and had an abortion, all without even letting them know?
If angry, abusive, violent parents exist (and I believe they do), then isn’t that an entire problem that needs dealing with in and of itself?
You are assuming a abusive situation at home, which is a sepperate isses, child abuse is a crime in an of itself.
Minors are not permitted to do many things, i.e. enter into contracts (and have sex for that matter), their parents are responsible for their well being until they are found to be legally an adult.
I can’t understand the arugment against parental notification, it is totally and completely inconsistant.
I’m basically agnostic and Pro-Choice. I don’t like the idea of abortion, but I support the rights of others to make up their own mind.
However I agree with those whose say that we are talking about a medical procedure. What other procedures can a minor get without parental permission?
I think there should be parental permission. I don’t accept the proposition of wide scale abuse by parents. I think abusive parents are abusive parents. Maybe parental permission being required would actually help get more teens out of abusive homes and more abusive parents in jail.
The situation has no winners, but if it ever came down to it, I would want to know if my daughter was going in for an abortion and help her decide what to do.
I would most likely allow her to get an abortion and I would want to take her there and bring her home. I would also be very disappointed and I would expect her to be in anguish over such a decision. I sincerely hope I am never put into such a position but my wife and I should have to be part of the decision.
Jim
I would guess it’s because no child has ever been thrown down the stairs or booted out of her home for taking Midol.
The reason is this. If parental consent laws were put into place, a minor would have to get special dispensation from a judge or magistrate before having an abortion without her parents consent. The only reason she could give for seeking an abortion behind her parent’s backs would be fear of violent reprisals. To make sure the system wasn’t abused, the judge or magistrate would need to see proof of said abuse, which would be very difficult to produce. Even if the girl was covered in bruises she would not be able to prove that they were inflicted by one of her parents.
The girl would then be faced with a trilemma. She could either (A) try to obtain proof of abuse, (B) seek out an illegal abortion, or (C) tell her parents she is pregnant.
The first option makes unreasonable demands of the girl in two ways. Firstly, the fear of abuse may stem from a violent incident which happened a long time ago. Her parent (or parents) may not abuse her habitually. How would she be able to get proof that the potential for a violent reaction to the news that she is pregnant is credible possibility? Should she try and provoke her parents to beat her on camera? What could she seriously be expected to do? Maybe it’s my lack of imagination but if the abuse wasn’t recent I simply cannot see how she could reasonably be expected to substantiate her fears of violent reprisals.
Needless to say, just because her fears remain very difficult to prove, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are groundless.
Secondly, if her parent(s) is/are not habitually abusive, she might well not want to provide proof of previous abuse which could land him/her/them in jail. She might not have a very happy home life. She might walk on eggshells when her father is in a bad mood. He might even have hit her once or twice in the past. But this doesn’t mean she doesn’t love him. Even if she somehow did manage to find evidence of prior abuse, should she reasonably be expected to provide this evidence to a judge when it could tear her family apart? Just so she can undergo a supposedly private medical procedure?
Option B requires her to risk her health on the table of some back alley abortionist and as such we as a society should do everything we can to minimise the likelihood of her taking that route out of her trilemma.
Option C could entail violent physical retribution.
As Der Trihs recognised, this is based more on the fear of dumbassed lawsuits from greedy, opportunistic, or just plain hysterical parents than it is on reason and logic.
Cite please? I was under the impression that abortion is one of the safest surgical procedures there is.
Besides, if a girl is pregnant there’s only three ways the situation will resolve itself. The first is birth, the second is abortion, and the third is miscarriage. For the purposes of this discussion we only need to focus on the first two, both of which involve risks. The risk of dying from a safe and legal abortion is lower than the risk of dying while giving birth. Therefore, if the physical wellbeing of the pregnant minor is truly our concern we should be discouraging parental consent laws because with them comes increased risk that more minors will be placed in (relatively) dangerous situations than would be otherwise.
Can I have a cite for this too, please? Not that I disbelieve you or anything. I’m just keen to learn more.
I agree. The unspoken purpose of the legislation is to reduce the overall number of abortions. This, of course, ignores the argument that once we give parents authority to deny consent for an abortion, we also give them the authority to insist upon one.
Would those who support parental consent laws agree with a parents decision to force their daughter to undergo an abortion?
Because sometimes Daddy is the father of the child. And because sometimes Daddy and/or Mommy will abuse a child when they discover she becomes pregnant.
Any other questions?
Frankly, I think the fear of abusive parents is a side issue. The point is that it is the girl who is pregnant – she is the one who faces the prospect of having a baby for the rest of her life. It should be her decision and no one else’s. If she has a good, healthy relationship with her parents, then she will choose of her own free will to consult them for advice and support. If she chooses not to seek her parents’ advice, then I trust her judgement on that count – she knows her parents better than anyone else – and it’s not the government’s business to force her to do so. And if it comes down to the parents’ religious or other beliefs, then a pregnant girl should not be forced to carry and deliver a baby on the basis of someone else’s beliefs.
Sometimes Daddy and/or Mommy will abuse a child when they discover she failed chemistry. Does that mean we should not inform parents of a child’s grades in school?
There are plenty of things we inform parents of, with the full expectation that the kid will get into serious hot water with them over it. Sometimes that hot water results in abuse, yet we feel it’s good to inform parents of most misdeeds.
Do you really need one? Filling a dental cavity, lancing a hangnail etc are also surgical procedures for which consent is a factor.
I submit the existence of such organisations as this one; given that no such organisations exist for many other surgical procedures, I stand by my statement.
I suppose ultimately, that’s what could happen in the case of any surgical procedure; the minor could be forced to undergo the operation against her will. I can see how that makes people uncomfortable; it makes me uncomfortable, but if you can’t trust parents to make their best decisions for their children, then the children should be taken away from them.
Do all kids know how their parents will react?
I dropped out of college and joined the Navy. I expected my parents to be upset. Guess what, my Father was proud and only asked me why I didn’t talk to him first, he would have went with me and probably pushed me towards the Air Force. I was already 18. BTW: My father was even right about the Air Force being a better service to be in.
My Mom was upset, but only because I would be leaving home sooner than she expected.
Why do you feel a 14 year old would be the best judge of her parents reaction?
Kids are often clueless and expect the worse.
Jim
In an ideal world, yes. But note the world we live in. Not ideal. Not even close.
Also, in this ideal world that so many anti-choice folk seem to inhabit, the kids whose parents wouldn’t be abusive would know they wouldn’t be abused, and would naturally talk things over with mom and dad before making a decision. It’s a wonderful world we don’t live in.