This Pisses Me Off

Last voting day in California we had an Proposition on the table that would ban abortions for minors unless the parents were notified at elast 48 hours ahead of the scheduled termination. It was voted down (thank goodness) and now it is back up for vote, which really pisses me off.

Here is the outline of Prop 4

WAITING PERIOD AND PARENTAL NOTIFICATION BEFORE TERMINATION OF MINOR'S PREGNANCY

Initiative Constitutional Amendment: Changes Constitution, prohibiting abortion for un-emancipated minor until 48 hours after physician notifies minor's parents, legal guardian, or in limited cases substitute adult relative. Provides and exception for medical emergency or parental waiver.

It goes on to say it could cost millions in health care programs and court costs.



We voted it down once why the hell should they keep trying? Idiots!


Thoughts?

I'm well aware of the controversy surrounding parental notification in California. I also think it is an abomination to keep putting it on the ballot year after year.

Parental notification laws are just some of the right wing Christian fundamentalist laws which cause late term abortions as well as death or serious health impairment to teens. For example, in states which have these laws, second trimester abortions are much more common because pregnant 17 year old's wait until they turn 18 to abort.

This is from pro choice talk:

Pro-life Legislation Causes 2nd Trimester Abortions

http://www.prochoicetalk.com/message-board-forum/viewtopic.php?t=5793



What would help is to reduce restrictions currently in place that cause delays in obtaining first trimester abortions.

Ironically, these delays causing second term abortions are the result of "pro-life" legislation.

Hyde Amendment banning federal funds for abortion causes delays in terminations because the woman must raise the money to pay for the procedure.

Mandatory waiting periods (24, 48 hours,etc.) cause delays because many women must travel and stay overnight to obtain an abortion. They must secure childcare (61% of women seeking abortion already have at least one child) and time off from work. They must save the money to pay for food and lodging on top of the cost of the procedure.

87% of counties in U.S. have no abortion provider, which is another situation caused by the "pro-life" movement. Protesters, bomb threats and other violence, unnecessary clinic regulations, etc. cause clinics to close.

Parental consent laws have had a dramtic affect as well. Teens delay abortions until they turn 18, or they must travel to the next closest state without these restrictions, or they try to get judicial bypasses which can take up to 3 weeks.

Following you will find data backing up these assertions, along with much more detail explaining how pro-life legislation is the cause of many second trimester abortions.

Quote :

In Missouri, the odds of minors' traveling to another state for abortions increased by 53% when the parental consent law took effect. By contrast, the odds of out-of-state travel increased only 13% for 18-19-year-olds and 18% for women aged 20-24. Furthermore, analyses of data on Missouri minors who obtained abortions in neighboring states suggest that travel may have accounted for the entire decline in the in-state teenage abortion rate after the law went into effect.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3634/is_199807/ai_n8807776/print

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Quote :

The Impact of Mandatory Waiting Periods and Parental Consent Laws on the Timing of Abortion and State of Occurrence among Adolescents in Mississippi and South Carolina

In Mississippi, however, both laws are associated with an increase in the proportion of abortions performed out of the state and the parental consent statute with later abortions. The conclusion is that Mississippi's 24-hour as compared with South Carolina's one-hour delay requirement, and Mississippi's two-parent as contrasted with South Carolina's one-parent consent statute explain the stronger behavioral response in Mississippi. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Management and Ananlysis.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/79502504/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

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continued:

Quote :

In his 1990 book, "Abortion, The Clash of Absolutes," Laurence H. Tribe says, parental notice/consent laws, "while perhaps intended to foster communication within families, may only compound desperate situations where communication just is not possible. In families whose children feel free to discuss such things with a parent, neither consent laws nor notification requirements are necessary. And even if one could as a general matter legislate intrafamily communication, something that seems most unlikely, there are some circumstances in which the consequences of the attempt would surely be devastating."

Adolescents are more likely than older women
to obtain abortions later in pregnancy.

In homes where abuse is present or where communication about sex is not encouraged, young girls may not feel they can go to a parent. For those young girls, it's critical that medical confidentiality be available to them.

{L}egislating parent-child communication will always fail to produce the desired outcome. We believe that education and skill building in parent child communication has the potential of producing the desired outcome without placing a child's health and life at risk, which parental notice/consent laws would do.



{S}uch laws are intended by the anti-abortion movement as another way to further restrict access to abortion services, and has no basis in a genuine desire to protect the health or life of any teenage girl.


Approximately 3.2 million cases of child abuse (emotional, physical, psychological, sexual abuse, and neglect) were reported in 1997.2

In 1989 Spring Adams, was a 13-year old from Idaho, who became pregnant when her father raped her. Her age was at issue in paying for an abortion or traveling the nearly six-hour journey to the nearest abortion provider. Social Services in Idaho would not cover the abortion cost because there was a law preventing public funding of abortions - even in cases of rape and incest. A private organization stepped forward to pay for her abortion, travel and lodging expenses but the day before she was to leave, her father found out. When she went to sleep, her father went into her room and shot her to death with a rifle.

Around the same time period, news reports were a flutter with the story of a 15-year old honor student at a Catholic high school who became pregnant. She knew she could not seek her mother's help. Seven years earlier her mother had sought an abortion and had regretted it. Since that time, her mother had repeatedly stressed to her children that abortion was murder. So rather than tell her mother, she tried to self-abort. Her mother found her, dead on the bathroom floor. She had died from a pulmonary air embolism caused by the wound she had inflicted on herself as she tried to self-abort.

And of course, the now very well known story of 17 year-old Becky Bell who lived in Indiana, where a parental consent law is enforced. Rather than disappoint her parents who believed they had a wonderful and communicative relationship with Becky, she, just shy of her 18th birthday when she would not have been subjected to the consent law, sought an illegal abortion. She died.

A 1991 study based on a nationally representative sample of more than 1,500 unmarried teenage girls having an abortion, where no mandatory parental consent or notice laws are enforced revealed that, 61% of parents knew of their daughter's pregnancy and abortion.

Additionally, 57% of the mothers who knew about their daughter's pregnancy did not tell her father.

Further, the study revealed that the young girls who did not tell their parents were disproportionately older (aged 16 or 17), white and employed.5

In this study, these teens revealed the most common reasons for not telling their parents. First, there was a desire to preserve their relationship with their parents and a desire to protect the parents from stress and conflict.

And of those who didn't tell their parents, 30% had experienced violence within their home and was afraid that violence would occur or were afraid they would be thrown out of their home.6

Additionally, and as equally as important, was the revelation by 52% of the young girls whose parents were not aware of their pregnancy and abortion that they had consulted with another adult, other than clinic staff about having the abortion. Twenty-two percent said they had consulted with a professional.7

But the fact that is most revealing and disturbing, is that nearly 40% of the teens that would not go to a clinic if they were forced to tell their parents in order to do so, say they would instead self-abort or find an illegal abortion.8 The stories above bear out that stark reality.

Having noted all that, it is important to note why the number of teenage deaths from attempts to self-abort or seek an illegal abortion in states where parental involvement laws are enforced, hasn't skyrocketed. In addition to not being able to stop desperate teenage girls from self-aborting or seeking an illegal abortion, these laws have not created a decline in the teenage rate of abortion as was alleged and hoped for by their sponsors. Rather, they have created an influx of teenage girls seeking an abortion into states who do not have such laws. When a teenage girl believes she can make the arrangements and garner the money, sometimes by seeking the help of another adult, a friend, aunt or grandmother, or even her much older adult boyfriend, she seeks a legal abortion in another state that does not require parental notice or consent.

For teenagers who already have a history of delaying an abortion decision or procedure because they don't discover they are pregnant until later in the first trimester or the beginning of the second trimester, or put that knowledge out of their mind until they can no longer ignore the truth, or because they are frightened and do not know what to do or where to turn, and because they must find a way to pay for the abortion itself, these laws add additional considerations that will delay an abortion procedure even further into the second trimester.

Now these young girls must find additional funds to support a trip out of state and perhaps even an overnight trip. She has to figure out how to account for her time away as well and she must find the transportation.

All these considerations can add weeks to an already very progressed pregnancy. Currently, Planned Parenthood notes in their web site Fact Sheet, Abortion After the First Trimester, January, 2000, "Adolescents are more likely than older women to obtain abortions later in pregnancy. Adolescents obtain 29% of all abortions performed after the first trimester (CDC, 1998). Among women under age 15, more than one in four abortions is performed at 13 or more weeks gestation (CDC,1998). The very youngest women, those under age 15, are more likely than others to obtain abortions at 21 or more weeks gestation (CDC, 1998)."


The American Medical Association also concluded in a 1992 study that parental consent and notice laws, "increase the gestational age at which the induced pregnancy termination occurs, thereby also increasing the risk associated with the procedure."
The Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet referenced above, also said, "Overall , abortion has a low morbidity rate. Fewer than 1 percent of women who undergo legal abortion sustain a serious complication.10 The rate of complication increases by about 20 percent for each additional week of gestation past eight weeks. Presently the death rate from abortion at all stages of gestation is 0.6 per 100,000 procedures. The risk of death associated with childbirth is about 10 times as high as that associated with abortion. The risk of death associate with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every 530,000 abortions at eight or fewer weeks to one per 17,000 at 16-20 weeks, and one per 6,000 at 21 or more weeks.11 After 20 weeks gestation there is no statistically significant difference in maternal mortality rates between terminating a pregnancy by abortion and carrying it to term.12

Clearly, while legal abortion remains one of the safest surgical procedures done in this country, the risks increase for abortions performed in the second trimester.

Anti-abortion supporters of parental consent/notice laws have called the safety of legal abortion into question for the purpose of justifying this type of legislation. However, considering that the statistics have always shown legal first and early second trimester abortions to be safer for a woman than carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth, it belies their true motivation, which is to place another obstacle in the way of every young girls access to safe and legal abortion. They also want the opportunity to stop their daughter's from accessing legal abortion. However, as has been made clear here, there is no way to make a young girl tell a parent but that seems to have had little effect upon anti-abortion extremists. They also are apparently not swayed by the fact that these laws will endanger every mother and father's daughter in America for what is an unattainable goal.

Anti-abortion judges often ignore the standards given them by
the Supreme Court and deny a bypass petition despite its merits.

For example, in Indiana, lawyers and clinics routinely refer teenagers out of state because local judges either refuse to hold hearings or are widely known to be anti-abortion. In Massachusetts, a number of judges refuse to handle judicial bypass petitions while others focus inappropriately on the morality of abortion and are insulting and rude to the minors and their attorneys. The Supreme Court even found that in Minnesota, many judges refuse even to hear bypass proceedings. In Ohio a 17 year-old who testified that her father beat her was denied a judicial bypass. She was a senior in high school with a 3.0 average who played team sports and worked 20-25 hours a week, paid for her own car expenses and medical expenses. In Louisiana, a judge denied a 15 year-olds bypass petition after asking her a series of inappropriate questions including what the minor would say to the fetus about her decision. Her request was granted only after a rehearing by six appellate court judges. (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League - Web Site "The Child Custody Protection Act and the Inadequacy of Judicial Bypass Procedures"

Court proceedings in Minnesota routinely delayed abortions by more than one week, and sometimes up to three weeks (ACLU, 1986) Further, Planned Parenthood's web site said, "In Minnesota, the proportion of second-
trimester abortions among minors terminating their pregnancies increased by 18 percent following enactment of a parental notification law. Likewise, since Missouri's parental consent law went into effect in 1985, the proportion of second-trimester abortions among minors increased from 19% in 1985 to 23% in 1988 (Donovan, 1992)."

In rural areas, judicial bypass is seen as a threat to young girls confidentiality. For example, in one instance that the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League cites, a young girl discovered that her former Sunday school teacher would conduct her bypass hearing.

In the single year following the elimination of a parent consent
requirement for HIV counseling and testing in Connecticut, the number of
teens aged 13-17 obtaining HIV tests at publicly funded facilities doubled.

Finally, Life and Liberty for Women believes that requiring parental consent/notice for minors to obtain STD testing, AIDS testing, or contraceptives is as dangerous and deadly to young girl and young boys health and life as such a requirement to obtain abortion services is.

Approximately 23 states and the District of Columbia give minors the authority to consent to contraceptive services. About 27 states and the District of Columbia authorize a pregnant teenage girl to obtain prenatal care and delivery services without parental consent or notification and 49 states and the District of Columbia give teenage girls and boys the authority to consent to the diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. I think the implications of these facts are especially important to note here. Planned Parenthood, on their web site fact sheet Teenagers, abortion, and Government Intrusion Laws, says, "many of these laws allow minors
to give consent to treatments that involve greater medical risk than a first-trimester abortion, such as surgical interventions during pregnancy and Caesarean sections."

The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) on its web site, "Mandatory Parental Involvement In Family Planning Services Threatens Minors' Health," said, "In the single year following the elimination of a parent consent requirement for HIV counseling and testing in Connecticut, the number of teens aged 13-17 obtaining HIV tests at publicly funded facilities doubled. Fifty-eight percent of high school students surveyed in 3 public schools in central Massachusetts reported having health concerns they would like to keep from their parents. Approximately 25% of the students said they would forgo seeking certain types of medical treatment if there were a possibility of disclosure to parents by physicians."

anti-abortion supporters of parental consent/notice laws,
are intent upon trying to stop all abortions and the health and life
of this nation's youngsters pales in importance to that ultimate goal
http://www.lifeandlibertyforwomen.org/issues/issues_parental_involvement.html

Quote :

[b]Such restrictions as biased counseling and mandatory waiting periods have made access to abortion services more and more difficult. The same is true of unnecessary clinic regulations, another legislative tactic of anti-choice groups. [b]In 1995, anti-choice lawmakers in eleven states sponsored bills that sought to make "mini-hospitals" out of otherwise safe, efficient, and cost-effective outpatient abortion facilities. They demanded that the facilities conform to new specifications for minimum square footage in hallways and examining rooms, costly air circulation mechanisms, intrusive record-keeping and reporting, and mandatory ultrasound testing, to name just a few.
http://www.aclu.org/reproductiverights/abortion/16524res19960301.html

Quote :

Unnecessary Reporting Requirements Put Abortion Providers And Their Patients At Risk Of Harassment And Violence

Almost half of the women having abortions beyond 15 weeks of gestation say they were delayed because of problems in affording, finding or getting to abortion services.
Teens are more likely than older women to delay having an abortion until after 15 weeks of pregnancy, when medical risks associated with abortion increase significantly.

The number of abortion providers declined by 11% between 1996 and 2000 (from 2,042 to 1,819). 87% of all U.S. counties lacked an abortion provider in 2000. These counties were home to 34% of all 15–44-year-old women.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904509.html

I am completely against it because I know how many people would have to suffer at the hands of their parents (who may or may not be abusive!) because they do not want a baby.

This prop got absolutely no attention on ads this year. I think people are tired of seeing it because the decision has been made. Why not let it go?