Thursday, June 12, 2008

Why Parental Notification Laws Are a Stupid thing

Via Jezebel comes the story of pregnant 16 year old girl. She tells her boyfriend. Boyfriend tell his mother. Mother tells girl not to tell her parents, forges parental notification form, pushes girl into getting an abortion, and pays for abortion.

Afterwards girl tells her parents and they, being obviously pissed, press charges. The woman gets a year in jail.

Perhaps the girl would have chosen abortion on her own. Perhaps if she had told her parents they would have supported her in that choice. Or perhaps she would have decided to keep the baby. But she would have gotten to choose.

Parental notification laws do not make more pregnant girls talk to their parents. Most pregnant teenagers DO tell their parents. But parental notification laws make it so that the girl has less say in what happens to her own body. If she wants an abortion and her parents do not, that's it. No help for her. Hello motherhood! It also makes her vulnerable to people like the mother in this story. I don't have to imagine how scared the girl was. I know it.

I've talked a little about my own experience. I'll do it again here.

When i was 16, my mother was in a mental hospital and I lived with foster parents. They were people who had become foster parents only because it made them better candidates for adoption. (They told me that on almost my first night there). I had been with them for about 2 months when I found out I was pregnant. I knew before I even had the test that I wasn't having a baby.

I arranged the money, the transportation, the time off school so that I wouldn't be marked for ditching. I told my own mother and talked to my wonderful school counselor who was prohibited by law from telling me about abortion options, so she slyly slid a piece of paper with a phone number on it to me and told me not tell anyone where it came from. She didn't do that until after I told her there was no way in hell I was having a baby.

The day before the abortion, my foster mother (who I am pretty sure is the poster example of an emotionally abused woman, but that is another story) pulled me into my room and asked if I was pregnant.

She didn't ask with concern. She didn't ask with worry. She didn't ask with anger. Any of those I would have understood. When she asked me her eyes were lit up with potential happiness. She was almost fevered in her looks. Like a junkie asking if I had a spare rock.

I didn't have a problem telling people who would be helpful and supportive to me. But in about half a second I decided that telling her the truth would be bad news for me. I could see the hopeful desperation in her eyes. I knew that if I said "Yes, I am pregnant. Tomorrow I am having an abortion and everything has been worked out" that at the very least I would spend the entire night up with her and her husband while they tried to talk me out of it. I knew that it was far more likely that they would prevent me from having the abortion in any way they could. And Foster Pop was a cop. He had numerous ways of preventing me from doing things.

So I lied. I went the next day and had the abortion. I figured out that my state medicaid for foster kids wouldn't pay for an abortion, but it covered the cost of the anti-biotics and other prescriptions I needed afterwards. My boyfriend went with me and took excellent care of me before, during and especially afterwards.

I told my foster parents several days later. I was homeless less than a week after that. My stuff was all bagged up in big black plastic garbage bags and left in the driveway while they went on vacation to Disneyland.

Had parental notification laws been in place at the time, I would have been forced, at 16, to have a baby I didn't want. My only other option would have been adoption, which is exactly what my foster parents wanted, but not something I have ever considered. Ever.

I was responsible. I talked to adults who I knew were supportive and wouldn't pressure me. I think the girl in the Jezebel story would have too, but instead she got stuck talking to someone who did not have her best interests at heart. And that is what parental notification laws do. They remove from the girl the ability to find the kind of support she needs. Sometimes that is parents, usually that is parents. But sometimes it is not. Those are the worst situations. How can we ever know what the girl might have wanted for herself, when so many people with conflicting opinions get to control her.

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