WatersMoon110
I'm divided on the issue of parental consent. On the one hand, I feel that parents should be involved since it is a minor. On the other hand, I worry that laws might not make enough exceptions for cases of abuse or neglect.
There are many reasons that I believe the laws are essential. First off, in many cases of incest and abuse, at least one of the parents doesn't even know it's happening. By aborting the child and not telling the parents the clinics are actually helping the abuser hide the evidence and continue their crimes. If the parents themselves are the abuser then parental consent wouldn't be an issue since they'd probably be the ones bringing the daughter in for the abortion, again to hide the evidence of their crimes.
Most cases where teens get abortion however, have little to do with abuse by parents or relatives. Legally there is often still abuse since it’s considered child abuse for any adult to be having sex with a teenager. In these cases most tends don’t tell their parents simply because they’re ashamed. I was involved in some of the legal proceedings for a law on the topic in Vermont (which the freakin crazy democrats fought like mad to not even allow a vote) In that case one powerful testimony came from a mother whose daughter got an abortion without her knowledge. Since the girl was underaged they couldn’t access her medical records without parental permission. As a result they gave her the abortion, and various medications without finding out that she was very allergic to one of the medications. She went home, and the degree of followup they did to make sure she was ok was to call her cellphone and when they got no answer they did nothing. But the reason there was no answer was that the girl had passed out and was literally dying on the floor of her room. Luckily her mother came home, rushed her to the emergency room, and saved her life. The girl later got pregnant again and went to the clinic with her mother who tried to talk her out of the abortion, but preferred to be there with her daughter since she couldn’t change her mind. The clinic this time didn’t actually LOOK at the medical records and attempted to prescribe the same lethal drug a second time, but were stopped by the mother.
Teens aren’t very mature or responsible and this is why parents need to be involved in most cases. The law that was proposed in Vermont had a clause for exceptions. All a girl who felt that they really couldn’t involve her parents had to do was to contact a judge who would meet her at a place of her own convenience if needed. The intent was that the judges would be pretty lenient and allow exceptions for most cases brought to them. But that most girls who were simply were ashamed to tell their parents would generally be better off for having them involved.
Included in this is the issue of child protection laws. Many pro-lifers are fighting abortion clinics because they are helping abusers and they are blatantly ignoring the laws that every case in which a medical professional even *suspects* child abuse they're required by law to report it. Some groups have gone around making calls to clinics claiming to be 13 year old girls with 22 year old boyfriends and they've caught many clinic workers on tape telling either telling the girls to come right in, they'll keep it a secret, or telling them to call back and not mention their boyfriend.
