Do you folks who think parents ought to be able to forbid your daughters to have an abortion also believe you ought to be able to force your daughters to have one?
tlw, I don’t want to start a big tangent here but I think your assertion that rights are all or nothing is way off-base. Even the right of free speech specifically guaranteed by the US Constitution is not absolute: slander, libel, incitements to violence, and threats against the President are all prohibited forms of speech. In all sorts of ways, the conflicting rights of individuals, organizations, government agencies, etc, are weighed against one another every day and decisions are made about which of the competing interests is the most compelling.
[definitely a hijack]
This I find really intriguing. Do you really suppose that there can be no consensus about what constitutes a private matter?
I’m so intrigued by this that I’ve started a separate thread over in GD. I hope you won’t mind that I quoted you without attributing it. I meant no offense at all by doing that and wasn’t sure how to handle the fact that it was your words that sparked the question for me but that you might not want to see your words dragged over into another forum. I’m just not sure what the etiquette for the situation demands. If you’d like me to add an attribution or anything in that thread, I’d be more than happy to do so.
I didn’t tell my mother that I was pregnant. My doctor did. I didn’t even go to the doctor for pregnancy, but for a UTI, and I just mentioned that oh, I was pregnant, how would that affect the treatment. At the time I hadn’t decided what to do. Abortion was illegal in most states, legal in some, including a close one. There was a “network.” I knew three people who’d had abortions. One told her parents, went to Mexico, and was fine; one hung out on a city street with $500 in her pocket and a pink umbrella waiting for a certain kind of car to pick her up and she found the experience humiliating and scary but ultimately safe; one nearly died and was dumped, dumped, on the steps of a hospital where during treatment she was badgered by police who threatened to arrest her if she didn’t tell them exactly where she’d been and who she’d been dealing with.
I didn’t much like those odds.
The people I knew who’d tried things on their own fared much worse. In the three years I was at a small college, 3 women killed themselves trying to induce abortion (various methods, but I should point out that at the point at which I found myself in trouble only one had died, the others were yet to come). So, as I said, I hadn’t decided. And I was 18. (Barely, but I was.) And still the doctor told my mother.
Who very maturely chose a selection of sleeping pills and OD’d. At the hospital, the doctor–the same s.o.b. who’d spilled the beans in the first place, against all medical privacy laws–reassured my aunt and I that she’d taken “the normal amount for someone who doesn’t really want to die but does want a little attention.”
This was the mature person who’d be helping me out with my decision? Couldn’t this MD have figured there was a reason I hadn’t told her?
It’s ok for someone her own age because 2 people who have consentual sex can’t BOTH be raping each other at the same time. With regards to the potential abuse, the law doesn’t have to prove that the adult manipulated the child, it is assumed to have happened. A person with fully developed decision making abilities doesn’t need this sort of protection.
The law puts many restrictions on what kids are allowed to do without adult supervision or approval. This is because they don’t trust kids to make the right decision.
Ummm…tattoos and piercings fall into the same category for me.
shrug
Further, yes our children are on loan and we are to take care of them and be RESPONSIBLE for them until our time is up, whenver that may be. That includes medical decisions.
Gee, next time my son or daughter needs a shot, I’ll ask them if they think they want it…if they don’t, oh, okay then. It’s THEIR decision. RME. Yes that ludicrious, and so are the thoughts that the CHILD has a right to have an abortion on her own that is being discussed here.
The nice thing about this little debate is that we’re all discussing a hypothetical pregnancy and abortion.
My memory is not so short as to have forgotten trying to figure out the best way to kill myself because I was 14 and 3 weeks late and I had no money or any way to get access to any kind of pregnancy test/doctor’s care/support. I decided if it went to 6 weeks I’d drown myself at the park after school one day.
I honestly hope my daughter is never faced with this decision. I also hope to never have to read in the paper about a girl who died having an illegal abortion because she couldn’t have her family know what had happened or about a girl whose parents did find out and beat her.
Children make adult decisions all the time. They decide to/not to smoke with their friends after school or about drinking when they are at a party or if they should have sex with their partner in the back seat of a car on a date. All you can do is try to teach them the morals/skills/facts/confidence to make the best decision they can.
I also really doubt any female, no matter what her age is, who seeks an abortion walks into a clinic and says ‘hi … gimme an abortion’ and gets one right there and then. From what I understand there is both a medical exam and counseling involved.
I hear you tanookie. I remember being 17 and in that position. My parents would have just killed me. Heck, they about beat me to a pulp when they found out I actually had sex for the first time (w/my now dh).
I remember going to Planned Parenthood for contraception advice. Saved my babysitting money to pay a small fee (which they reduced drastically for me)…I only made $1/hour lol.
Planned Parenthood is an agency I support, and is against the grain of the BAC’s I know. But they weren’t in my shoes, they don’t have a clue.
Only if you’re comfortable sharing with us. It is not compulsory.
Seriously, that was a very sad story. I am so so sorry.
Was it the doctor’s decision to make, telling your mother? No. He was not a trained psychologist. Would it be a psychologists decision to make? No. Shrinks are trained very early on that confidentiality is the one singularly powerful tool they have. A shrink that betrays that confidentiality is, by definition, bad at her job.
Once again, I would ask those in favor of disclosure laws how many girls in abusive households you are willing to sacrifice in order that you can maintain the illusion of control over your own child. I’ll accept specific numbers.
Color me confused. You were pregnant at 17? And your parents would have killed you if they found out? And yet you think the state should have mandated that your doctor inform them?
No sorry, the part about being late and thinking I was pregnant. I wouldn’t have had an abortion, I would have told my parents and suffer the consequences because I did something wrong and yet I also was scared. My doctor didn’t know…and planned parenthood didn’t know. I just THOUGHT I was pregnant.
What’s the debate? You can enact any rules you want over your child but the government’s not obligated to enforce them. If you don’t want your daughter to have an abortion, physically restrain her, hire a P.I., or personally follow her whereever she goes, but don’t expect that anyone else should be mandated to help you on your quest. Parents have all the rights, they just can’t trump physical reality, that your child is actually a seperate being who’s going to know, think, and do things you won’t know about (didn’t we have this debate before?).
I agree. Abortion is a horrible, and dangerous, form of birth control. There is a part of me that says one (o.k., two) abortions means someone has had bad luck: contraception failed, rape, or some other very unfortunate occurrence. But if it gets to be a repeated process, someone is in need of sterilization or at least some serious counseling. Not that I am suggesting legislation to this effect, just that it is very irresponsible, to say the least.
Just for clarification, my daughter is NOT pregnant. She’s 11.
All the screaming rhetoric and foaming at the mouth notwithstanding, I must stand by my position.
Until she is 18, my daughter’s welfare is my responsibility. I plan on avoiding a possible pregnancy by instilling in her values and morals and teaching her to focus on her goals. I also believe that the majority of parents are good parents, tanookie’s the unfortunate exception, of course. (Please tell me sweetie, that your father has NO access to your children, then I can sleep tonight.)
My issue, as I will state one last time, is not one of forcing my child to have an abortion or a baby. The issue is being taken out of the decision-making process when it comes to the welfare of my minor child. It is entirely possible her father and I will agree with whatever decision she makes. However, the state has ruled that we not be consulted.
And since we, not the state, have the responsibility of raising our children to be contributing members of society, I find their decision incredibly high-handed and arrogant.
You guys are probably right. The situation may never come up, and our daughter may come to us if she gets in trouble.
Then again, she may not. And she will never know that she could have gone through such a situation with the love and support of her family to ease her burdens. How much more traumatic would that be for a child, to bear that secret alone out of fear?
I also know there are horrible exceptions to this rule. But don’t punish the good parents for what bad parents do.
Ivylass, You can sleep… my children will never know their grandfather. I have not seen him since a few months after he gave me away at my wedding.
(yeah that must sound strange. my whole childhood was strange. it was very important that he actually be at my wedding as his mantra my whole life was ‘until you get married you are my property… the day you get married you become your husband’s property’ so he gave me away and that was that - my husband doesn’t view me as his property but does understand the whole twisted scenario)
No, what you want to do is remove your daughter from the decision making process about her own reproduction. That is a right which you do not possess and thus cannot be taken from you. It is simply not relevant whether you agree or disagree with her choices. The choice is hers and hers alone. The government cannot grant parents sovereignty over the reproductive rights of their children. It’s simply is not your fucking call. Deal with it.
Ummm, you need to deal with it. Your opinon…and I emphasize, OPINION, doesn’t need to be shoved down this woman’s throat.
As a parent, I decide what is my call and what is not, not you. And it appears to me that the purppose of what you have been ranting specifically to this woman on this thread is all in the name of her succumbing to your OPINION. She’s not gonna. Move on …
Ivylass, what about Polycarp’s points? There is no happy middle here - we either protect minors from bad parents (and we can’t do it without treading on good parents, too), or we hope for the best in awful situations like tanookie’s. Even in the worst case scenario your daughter would probably come to you beforehand because, I think I’m safe in assuming, you’re a good parent and you’ll have kept lines of communication open. But that’s not why we have laws in this area, or many others. They’re not for you, or for your daughter. They’re for tanookie. And upon reviewing the equities, I’m more concerned about her than I am about you. In all likelihood the laws will be utterly irrelevant to you, even if in theory they’re unsettling. And what is so large to her in reality is so small to you even in theory.
There are lots of things that aren’t your call. You don’t get to perform female circumcision on your daughter, you don’t get to force her to go through a pregnancy, and you don’t get to force her to have an abortion.
