Parental Notification Before an Abortion Performed on a Minor.
This proposes that the doctor of an unemancipated minor (non-married, non enlisted, etc.) must inform the parents of the minor and give them 48 hours to respond/intervene/whatever before performing the abortion.
This issue is very complicated, and I can't help but feel very removed from the situation; I am not yet a parent and have never been a teenage girl. I can see logic in both sides of this issue. The trouble I am having, though, is with the fact that this proposition is not addressing whether or not a teenager needs a parent's consent to have an abortion performed -- only whether they should be informed or not that it is happening. A huge part of me is trying to see the point of assuring that the parents are informed of the situation if they cannot legally do anything about it. Technically, in our country, we have decided that a child is the property of their parents until they are 18 years old, in which case, it seems as though an abortion should be treated like any other major medical procedure and need to have parental consent. Parental notification is different though. All that is really assuring is that an uninformed (out of touch?) parent finds out what their daughter is about to do so that they can, I don't know, discipline them? Maybe ground them so that they can't leave the house to have the procedure done? What is this really going to accomplish? If the daughter doesn't trust her parents enough to tell them about the situation, how is them knowing about it going to cause anything but drama? Ultimately she is going to make the decision on her own anyway, right?
This is a hard one for me, and I don't believe that I feel strongly enough one way or the other to vote on this topic. If anyone has some further insight for me, I would really appreciate it.
Websites:
http://votecircle.com/proposition.php?id=85
http://www.yeson85.net
http://www.noon85.com
4 comments:
Have you thought of this from the view of the unborn baby? Maybe a grandparent could talk their young daughter into letting the poor little thing actually be born if they only knew that it was on the way.
Yeah, I thought of that, and I see the possible value in that. A parent might be able to offer a perspective to their child that she hasn't thought of yet. The question for me is whether or not the government should have to intervene in the parent-child communication process. If the parent isn't close enough to the child to know that something is wrong, and if the child isn't comfortable enough to bring the issue to the parents, then does that mean that we should rely on the government to initiate that dialogue? And if the child is old enough to get pregnant, shouldn't conversations about abortion have taken place already? My gut tells me that it would be better if the parents knew, but I still have to decide if it is the government's place to make that call. This is a tough one for me...
If im legally and financially responsible for all my child's actions until they are 18, then i better damn well be notified by licesened professionals before they do ANY procedure which may result in harm, or emotional trauma that I will have to deal with and pay for in future hospital bills and counseling. Its not a matter of the government initiating dialogue between parent and child, its about protecting the parent's right to knowledge.
Yeah, I agree about the financial and legal responsibility thing. I am also wondering why this issue is only about notification and not consent. I think that it is because a proposition for consent failed a couple years back. And doctors are already "legally responsible" to do a lot of things -- i guess that this isn't much different. And the fact that the child has the option to go to a judge and get around it should hopefully take care of most of the extraordinary scenarios.
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