Now, before this disintegrates into another abortion debate, let me just say that I am pro-choice. However, I have a serious problem with someone performing a medical procedure on my child without my knowledge or consent. (Barring to save her life, of course.)
Something about this just doesn’t sit right with me. Yes, I know there are narrow-minded, strict parents who would disown their daughters if they got pregnant, but does that mean that the rest of us don’t have the right to know that our child is in trouble? That she needs help? That she can’t have her parents’ love and support through such a crisis?
I may be wrong, but I don’t even think you can get your ears pierced if you are a minor without your parents’ consent in Florida. Certainly that was the case in SC. So if not pierced ears, why an abortion?
My daughter does not have a right to privacy where her father and I are concerned. We respect her space, but if she’s having problems in school or if she got in trouble with the law, we would be called. Not the state of Florida.
She’s my child. I have a right to know, until she is 18, what is going on in her life. To me, this law says that the state, not the parent, is the ultimate authority. This is not about abortion. This is about a parent’s right to know what is going on in their child’s life.
Apparently the right of a girl to abort her baby overrides the right of a parent to know what’s going on in their kid’s life and perhaps give them guidance and help them sort through all the issues at hand.
That’s what I gather, anyway. I’m with you on this one, it’s NUTS.
I’m trying to find the policy of the hospital that I work at regarding medical privacy of minors. However, the best I can find so far is that in many (not all) cases, if the minor does not want the parent knowing about something, the physician may not inform the parent. Hopefully someone will pop up with something more concrete - but anyway, it’s not just abortions. Doctor-patient confidentiality is important.
I’d be more concerned that a child/teen is worried enough to not want their parent to know about some medically important issue than I am about the fact that they have the legal right to not have to tell the parent about it.
Simply speaking, the pro-abortion side insists on one hand that abortion is just another medical procedure, while championing laws that treat the process differently than any other medical procedure.
Doctor-patient confidentiality usually does not apply to parents when a minor is involved, and rightly so.
Okay so pretend you’re that girl. How would you feel, given her exact situation? I am just playing devil’s advocate here. I know that if I got pregnant I would have probably run away or had an abortion. I am pro-choice as well (something that doesn’t sit right w/my church family but hey, tough :D) but sometimes you don’t have any options when you’re a teen and your parents are horrid.
That being said, it would really piss me off if someone did that to my kid LOL
That is stupid. Something as serious as abortion should involve the parents. And yes, you must have your parent’s permission to get your ears pierced here. Talk about consistancy.
I’ll bet you a million dollars this dissolves into a pro-choice/anti-abortion argument
Unless the parents have been found unfit, they have rights.
I agree that if a girl is in this situation at a young age, she doesn’t have a lot of great choices available to her. However, that doesn’t remove her parents from the equation.
I’m a dad, albeit a new one. If my daughter were raped, taken advantage of by an older male as a teenager or pregnant by another teen, I would need to know, so her mom and me could help her.
I’m very much in favor of parental consent laws, Parental notification laws are a weak substitute, but better than nothing.
I have never, ever, heard any person or organization state a “pro-abortion” position. “Pro-abortion” means you think abortion is a good and desirable thing to be sought out. No one is in favor of that. [Bruce, you just won your bet.]
On the OP, this is a very, very difficult issue. I’ve heard of cases where the young woman was afraid to tell her parents and was convinced (not forced) to do so, and after predictable tears and distress found that they worked with her to find a solution to the situation. On the other hand, I am convinced that in some specific circumstances, there would be even more awful consequences if the parents were told.
Obviously, for parents, the best situation would be to establish early on that it is o.k. to come to them with problems, but I cast no aspersions in cases where that doesn’t happen, because it can be due to a LOT of different causes. I was fortunate that I convinced my daughters when they first started dating that (1) If they were ever someplace they did not want to be and needed my help to get home, that they were to call me regardless of the time, place or circumstances and (2) If they got into ANY kind of trouble, they should tell me – that our first concern would always be to get them home safe and get them help, and that we would deal with the problem together.
AFAIK, this is already the case in CA, where I live. Anyone have solid knowledge? I agree, it’s crazy. The fact is that abortion is a fairly serious medical procedure that can have complications, and someone generally ought to be watching to catch them. Parents ought to know what is being done to their kids. It’s ridiculous and, frankly, horrifying. (I heard recently of a case here in town where the mother went to the school to find her daughter, and the staff refused to tell her where she had gone.)
I’m willing to bet that most teenage girls would prefer not to tell their parents about a situation like this, because they don’t want to admit to what’s going on and that they don’t have full control of their lives. I have always had a great relationship with my parents, but I wouldn’t want to tell them if I’d done something like that as a teen. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.
For a long time now, state people have been assuming that they know more than parents, and should have more rights and more power where children are concerned. Overall, it seems to backfire badly.
I dunno, if the girl doesn’t feel comfortable enough to bring something this serious to her parents, maybe the parent/child relationship needs some help?
My sister had her first abortion at 15. My mother was told about it from her and not her doctor. I find it funny that parents are freaking out about this. If you don’t know what your kids are up to, having a doctor tell you against her will is the least of your problems. I don’t mean from a rape angle either. Kids are having sex. Any parent who’s oblivious to that fact needs some parenting classes or something. Some of my best lady friends had sex at 14-16 years old (and here’s me starting at 24!).
I hate it when parents rely on the fucking law to parent their child. Maybe we should enact a law that states kids must disclose everything to their parents? Yeah, that’ll work!
Not to overstate what should be obvious, but hasn’t one of the reasons that this is considered perhaps the best way to go is because the girl might be a victim of incest? I mean, it would be undeniably damaging to alert her parents to her potential abortion situation if daddy is the one who got her in ‘harm’s way’. Just a thought.
Even children have a right to doctor patient confidentiality. If a teenager tells her doctor that she is sexually active, for instance. The doctor cannot inform the parents. That’s the way it should be.
When it comes to abortion, a lot of teenage girls would be in danger from abusive parents. If they could not receive a confidential abortion they would seek other, more dangerous ways to abort. The need to ensure a safe and legal procedure for these kids is far more important than the (non-existent) “right” of control freak parents to be informed about it. If a parent is not going to be abusive or fraek out about it, then the kid would probably tell them anyway.
The question is this: Would you rather have your daughter get a legal abortion and not tell you or an illegal abortion and not tell you?
How many people here support the right of parents to force their pregnant minor daughter to have an abortion against her will?
How does that correlate with your view regarding the right of parents to deny consent to a daughter who wants an abortion?
Me, I’m prochoice off on the extreme end of the prochoice-prolife spectrum. I understand the reason for the laws we’re discussing but I agree that they are a messy and ultimately unworkable workaround to a social problem. Ideally, I think parents should be informed if their daughter is seeking an abortion because to say otherwise is so thoroughly incompatible with general parental rights regarding medical procedures; but I think reproductive medical decisions are so vividly personal that parents should not have a right to prevent or coerce an abortion.
I also think, however, that girls should have unimpeded access to birth control and b/c related information, which they do not currently have; that children of all sexes and ages should have legal protections against excessive parental violence or unreasonable punitive treatment, which is not even close to the case (see below).
In short, there is a problem with parental notification – parents of a certain mindset and worldview are inclined to beat the crap out of their daughters and subject them to gross indignities for having sex, and their daughters would often prefer attempting do-it-yourself abortions with knitting needles and whatnot to having their parents find out that they were sexually active.
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The long-range solution to this problem is not to give minor females a right to privacy that contradicts parental authority regarding medical treatments, but rather to give minor females (and males for that matter) access to legal redress. What we have now is Child Protective Services or whatever name it goes by in your locale. This is not a system guaranteeing children the right to pursue legal protection against unreasonable parenting, it is a system authorizing social workers to call in intervention when they believe abuse or neglect is taking place. There are reasons that it is set up that way but while the rationale is good the result kind of sucks for everyone, and while I understand that 11 month old babies are in no position to retain an attorney if their parents are neglecting them, that’s no excuse for giving 11 year old children no route for filing a complaint when they believe their parents are exceeding the bounds of reasonable parental behavior.
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By itself, with no remedy for this situation being offered alongside it, I could not support laws mandating parental notification, but I’m open to suggestions and I agree with the fundamental argument laid out in the OP.
All of you are assuming that the girl has a healthy relationship with her parents, and that embarrassment is the only reason she won’t go to them for support.
The sad truth is that not every girl has that kind of relationship. There are girls pregnant by incest who would sooner die than tell anyone what was going on. How can you tell the father who got you pregnant that you are pregnant, or that your brother, cousin, uncle, whoever, knocked you up? I once knew a girl who found herself pregnant by her father; she knew damn well she couldn’t go to her parents. She ended up in the hospital with an eating disorder after a suicide attempt. Should the doctor’s office or hospital be required to notify the parents?
For that matter, what about girls who come from abusive or dysfunctional families? Would you knowingly send a girl into that kind of environment after her parents were told she got an abortion?
My personal feeling is that the state has no business legislating parental communication, period. They don’t know what’s best, but there are circumstances where protecting the girl’s privacy is the right thing to do. The decision to act needs to rest with the girl and her health care providers.
Cite? As far as I know, doctor-patient confidentiality applies, as it should. Where medical issues are concerned, the patient is #1. If the kid wants her parents to know, then she’ll tell them. Forcing them to seek consent only prevents people from gaining access to services that they need.
“Kids” at that can hide an swful lot from their parents, particularly ones who believ (or have been decieved into thinking) their chidlren are old enough to be afforded significant trust and help. The whole point is that these kids are undertaking a very hude decision, oe that they will have to live with physically and emotionally for a very long time, and they are likely not thinking straight.
