I don't understand what the controversy is here. If a MINOR wants an abortion they need to have parental consent. Full stop. A school nurse can not dispense an aspirin to a minor without parental consent. A minor can not go to an R movie, buy cigarettes, get a piercing or a tattoo or be treated by a doctor for an ingrown toe nail without parental consent. Abortion is surgery that has both anesthetic risks and can have serious consequences (bleeding out, etc.) and the thought that someone's thirteen year old daughter could do that without their parent's knowledge is ludicrous.
To date, thirty states have 'parental notification' laws (and polls show that these laws have 80% public approval), but currently children seeking abortions can cross state lines (often to clinics openly recommended by the ones in their state that are prohibited from performing the abortion) and have the procedure anyway. To those of you who would support this --please think about how it would feel if it was your daughter...what if she underwent this with the false notion (that many teens have) that you would disown her --and then died under anesthesia. The thought is unbearable.
"Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) has introduced H.R. 748, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA), with the bi-partisan support of 108 original cosponsors. This critical legislation makes it a Federal offense to transport a minor across state lines to circumvent that state's abortion parental notification laws. In addition, the bill will require that in a state without a parental notification requirement, abortion providers are required to notify a parent." (source)
There was an interesting documentary on the Discovery channel that claimed that teenagers are only capable of using a very small part of their brains. The scientists and researchers were not sure why that was, but explained how it rendered teenage problem solving skills and rationalizations sorely deficient. Allowing them to make life changing and potentially life threatening decisions with no adult counseling would be an egregious mistake (even, it would seem, in the eyes of science).
*And yes, I believe in the rare (less than 1%) case of pregnancy occurring from rape/incest and when a parent or family member is involved --a judge could over rule the parental notification...
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