There is a reason to turn out for the Governator's lousy special election, and that is to DEFEAT PROPOSITION 73, a law that would require that women & girls under 18 seeking abortion must have a court of law notify their parents - and that the judge's decisions on these cases become public record.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, "...mandating parental notification does not achieve the intended benefit of promoting family communication, but it does increase the risk of harm to the adolescent by delaying access to appropriate care."
--From PPGG Family Communication
"But Emmert, who represents abortion providers, said that in many circumstances, the girl has been impregnated by a male relative or boyfriend of her mother, making parental consent complicated, if not impossible."
--Access to Abortion Pared at State Level, the Washington Post.
This is a big deal. A HUGE deal. Rather than help teens prevent pregnancy, the law is designed to force pregnant girls to bear unplanned children. That's it. It will not stop teen pregnancy, nor will it help girls with unplanned kids finish school or avert living in poverty. This is about something else entirely - taking options away from women and girls of reproductive age.
The US has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrial world. This is political, and relates to the lack of universal health care that other developed nations enjoy, as well as the amount of mis/disinformation perpetuated by influential right-wing organizations. Kids are suffering the consequences of not just some imagined moral failing, but of our political and health care processes.
Kids are at high risk, thanks to adults. When I was growing up in a middle-class, urban home:
And I had to field constant phone calls from my kid sister's friends who were capable of getting pregnant, but whose parents either refused to discuss reproduction at all, or who made up wacky stories. Many of those conversations went something like this:
My sister: "Tell her!"
Friend: "Is it true that I can't get pregnant if I'm having sex for the first time?"
Me: "No. That's not true. You can get pregnant."
My sister: "See! See!"
These kids believed that they couldn't get pregnant if they didn't love the guy; if it was their first time; if they douched with Coca Cola; if they prayed... They often lived in religious households, were told well into their dating/reproductive years that the stork brought them, and so were winging it based on rumor and innuendo. Several of them got pregnant. Their parents' loving response was to make them homeless. Many of these girls wound up living with distant relatives in marginal conditions, on state support, and in poverty throughout the duration of my sister's acquaintance with them.
Those who had parents who were capable of discussing sex and risk with their kids had conversations with their kids. This law is about legislating notice to those parents that are NOT capable of having those discussions without state intervention, but only after their daughter is pregnant. The law will not make them capable: it will just send them a scary judicial notice, and leave their daughter to be treated as they wish. THAT is not how we protect teens.
Contraception is expensive.
Many teenagers cannot afford to pay for contraceptive methods. Pills cost $180$300 per year; injections cost $110 - $170 per year; implants cost up to $750; IUDs cost up to $450 (PPFA, 1998).
Many private insurance plans do not provide adequate coverage for contraception - no U.S. health care policy pays for condoms (Berne & Huberman, 1999); half of all fee-for-service plans do not cover any reversible methods of contraception and only one-third cover the pill; only 39 percent of traditional health maintenance organizations (HMOs) cover all five methods of prescription contraceptives, and seven percent do not cover any of them (Dailard, 1999).
Countries with lower rates of teenage pregnancy - the Netherlands, Germany, and France - also have liberal contraceptive coverage for contraceptive pills and devices, including free contraceptive services for teenagers (Berne & Huberman, 1999).
-- all from Facts About Teen Pregnancy @ plannedparenthood.org
Contraception fails, and poor people are forced to use unreliable public health agencies. Short story: Someone dear to me lives in poverty with her two, unplanned kids. A condom failure resulted in an unintended pregnancy, which she decided to continue. Her job didn't offer health insurance, so she went on welfare and Medicaid to have her first child. After many childcare ordeals, she went back to work and went on the Pill: BUT because the state health agencies required her to take days off work to show up IN PERSON for her prescriptions to be refilled, and she would lose her job for missing work, she had to go off the Pill... and wound up pregnant again by her unemployable spouse. She works double shifts, which means she doesn't even get to spend time with the kids she's sacrificed so much to have.
It's bad enough that adults should parent under such conditions. This is what the backers of Prop 73 want to force on teens.
Meanwhile, I have always had health insurance, speedy access to Emergency Contraception through my HMO (EC works! Yaay!), and birth control pills that are mailed to my home so I don't have to take time off work. My childlessness-by-choice was enabled by ECONOMICS.
A note to upstanding abstinent folks and married people who don't have lots of kids: you are "evil" and up for challenge next: The effort to force minors to bear children isn't an isolated campaign. Birth control and childlessness are anathema to certain elements in the right wing. Pretending to care about pregnant teens by forcing them to bear children without any support is just an easy campaign to run, because teens can't legally vote, and many people fear or dislike teens for their youth and fashion-page-imagined immorality. However, the right-wing is coming after the childless also, because "childlessness" is also a crime. Do a search for "deliberate childlessness" or "childless and evil," and you'll come up with the campaigns we'll see in future years.
"Christians must recognize that this rebellion against parenthood represents nothing less than an absolute revolt against God's design. The Scripture points to barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift. "
- http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpcolumn.asp?ID=1910 and similar
Please, please, please, let people know that Proposition 73 isn't designed to protect kids: it's just designed to make kids have more kids. It's also designed to put the idea of government intervention in individual family planning decisions up to a 'normal' level, which will not be restricted to teenagers in the long term.
Feel free to forward this message, or to direct people to:
Thanks for asking! I want many things for teenagers, women, and children, including:
Scandinavia has it, and so can we!
last updated september 11, 2005