What about the daughter’s beliefs? What if she decides she doesn’t want to be Catholic? Are you going to say to the daughter “screw you and your beliefs”?
Yeah, but there seems to be a lot of overlap between the anti-abortion groups and the anti-sex education in schools groups.
Or to put it another way, do you see anti-abortion groups also advocating easier access to birth-control as a viable strategy for reducing the number of abortions?
Pro-choice: "It’s wrong to force a woman to carry and give birth to an unwanted child ".
Pro-life: “It’s wrong to kill unborn fetuses”.
Simple solution: Dramatically reduce or remove the occurence of unwanted conception.
I have little doubt that modern science is currently capable of solving the abortion problem. Unfortunately, the not-so-hidden agendas of both sides dictate that they not only win, but the other side loses…
Pro-choice: “I demand the right to murder as many unborn fetuses as I like”.
Pro-life: “I demand the right to force evil fornicating women to carry a parasite inside them for 9 months”.
What about the daughter’s beliefs? What if she decides she doesn’t want to be Catholic? Are you going to say to the daughter “screw you and your beliefs”?[/quote]
No. I’m going to try to teach her as well as I can, and allow her to grow up so that hopefully when she is a mature woman she can make up her own mind. Answer all the questions a kid has as best I can. (caveat - I’m not Catholic).
And if she becomes pregnant, I want to talk to her about the options. Let her know that yeah, I’m pissed, and upset, and angry, I’m just human, but also let her know that I love her no matter what she ever does or doesn’t do. Maybe surprise her - kids always think they know exactly how their parents will react, and PARTICULARLY kids in this age group - and teach her a little bit about how I believe a person should handle these kinds of decisions. Let her know what her options are and my feelings on them, and listen to hers. She is my child, I love her, and I don’t want some stranger in an office cutting me out of such a major event/crisis in her life.
I’m not sure what your point is here. My understanding is that having an abortion is less dangerous than giving birth (well, to the mother), so if your point is “kids shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions without parental consent because abortions are dangerous,” I assume you also espouse the view that kids should be given enforced abortions if that’s what the parents want, since pregnancy is so dangerous; and that an OB/GYN should have to inform the parents if they see a pregnant minor even if the minor doesn’t want an abortion, so that the parents can make an informed abortion decision. To me, that’s crazy. I understand it’s a dangerous medical procedure, but short of getting into your time machine and stopping the girl from having sex, she’s facing medical hazards either way.
Secondly, and I know this will bring out the venomous bigots here, but what about a family, say a Catholic family, who truly feels that this is a major moral problem. Should they just be told “screw you and your beliefs”?
I think exactly what Matthew Gallant thinks.
There are a LOT of very difficult issues that families have to face. If you have a family where a kid is going to get beaten I guarantee you that there are other areas where parents get informed where the kid is going to be in trouble.
Obviously, but that doesn’t mean the kid should be forced to endure an extra beating, or an extra beating and a pregnancy that she doesn’t want. This is one of those “People will do it anyway, so there’s no point in trying to legislate it” arguments that I never understand. I guarantee you that there will be people murdered no matter what the law is, but I still think the law should protect people from being murdered as much as it can.
If you could find some way to have the parents removed from having any say in their child getting an abortion only in those cases where there is a dysfunctional and violent family, I’m with you.
Sure. Who wouldn’t be? By the same token, if you can find a way to allow parents a say in the decision only when they’re loving and supportive, I’m with you. Since neither of us lives in that sort of fantasyland, though, which injustice do you think is worse? Actually, that’s rhetorical, because you clearly think the loving parents who are cut out of the decision suffer a worse injustice. But I don’t agree.
That’s what 99.9% of the situations will be.
I very much doubt that it’s 99.9% of the situations and would be hard-pressed to say that it’s more than half (actually, it may be more than half simply because the middle class girl is more likely to have access to money to pay for an abortion, I guess). But at the end of the day, I don’t think you know any better than I do.
To me, it looks like you’re coming at this from a biased perspective that cares only for the concerns of loving parents. That’s understandable considering that you’re a (presumably) loving parent yourself. But the child’s feelings have to be taken into account, too–especially since many of them might have legitimate reasons for not wanting to tell their parents.
It’s not the stranger cutting her out of your life. It’s your daughter. We’re not talking about a law forbidding children from telling their parents; we’re just talking about whether there should be a law requiring that, or that plus the parent’s permission. If your daughter decides she wants to make this decision without you, shouldn’t she be able to? What if your wife is adamantly against an abortion, but your daughter wants it, and you are satisfied that your daughter is making an informed decision? Should one parent’s consent be enough? What if your daughter talked to your wife and cut you out of the process? What if your daughter just isn’t comfortable talking to any man (including her dad) about it?
I don’t mean to make this all personal. I’m just addressing the concerns they way you’ve laid them out.
OK - we’ve both made our opinions known. I can’t say you’re “wrong” - these are just opinions (except the stats on abortions are pretty easy to see - I used to see them pretty frequently when I did active minor counseling - abortion is pretty much a middle class birth control.) I think it’s absolutely wrong to tell me that I not only have no say, but not even the right to know if my child is given an abortion. You think counselors are a viable alternative. I understand your concern about those few kids who would have more than an emotional problem if they come home pregnant - I’ve picked kids up from abusive homes, so I probably understand it pretty well. And I don’t think it’s “OK” if that happens to them - I have to take a deep breath to keep from emotively responding to being accused of that.
I don’t know of an ideal everybody wins solution for this issue, but I don’t believe a blanket “any child can have an abortion without her parents being informed” is it. You do. Life’s a bitch. I wish there were easy answers to this stuff.
It’s not the stranger cutting her out of your life. It’s your daughter. We’re not talking about a law forbidding children from telling their parents; we’re just talking about whether there should be a law requiring that, or that plus the parent’s permission. If your daughter decides she wants to make this decision without you, shouldn’t she be able to?
I don’t mean to make this all personal. I’m just addressing the concerns they way you’ve laid them out.[/quote]
I don’t take it personally - really. This is a difficult situation, and good people have differences of opinions.
Should a 15 year old be able to decide whether she can have an abortion without telling her parents? Well, that’s what we’re arguing, right? I say no - believe me, kids that age aren’t the best decision makers in the world. They don’t get to decide whether to legally smoke or drink or watch any movie they like or go on a field trip or get married or drive a car, etc. etc. etc.
Fair enough. And I didn’t mean it to come out like you’re okay with kids being abused. You’re obviously not, and I don’t think you are and don’t think anyone reading this would think you are. We’ll just agree to disagree.
[quote=“jeff lackey”]
No. I’m going to try to teach her as well as I can <snip>[/quote]
I’m sure if you were the girl’s father you would deal with the situation as well as possible. In this hypothetical, however, ‘you’ aren’t the father, you are the law, telling the girl that if her parents don’t approve for religious reasons (that she doesn’t share) she HAS no choice.
Uh, which is not to say that I disagree with you about kids being abused–that didn’t come out right, either. Jeff and Ryan: United Against Child Abuse.
Damn, I missed all the excitement, but, per usual, I agree completely with Jeff Lackey. FWIW, I am completely pro-choice. I am not sure I would counsel a girl to have one, but it is not up to me unless the female in question is my underaged daughter.
My example for the class was going to be the pissed off pregnant 14 year old. She was grounded for having “her friend’s” bottle of wine. Her parents do not know she is pregnant. After being grounded, she tells her mom, “I hate you”, goes in her room, slams and locks her door. Middle of the night she sneaks out and has an abortion partially because she does not want to have a baby and partially because she knows her mother would hate it. A year, 5 years, 10 years later, she realizes she made a decision when she was 14 that she had no business making on her own and at that age.
My sister did plenty of really mean things to spite my mother after being yelled at, punished, and grounded. I realize calling mom a bitch to spite her and having an abortion to spite her are wildly different things, but I can easily see the above example happening.
Needing permission to have an abortion from shitty parents is a tough one, no doubt, but allowing every teenager free reign to do whatever he/she wants before they have the experience and tools to make those decisions is the wrong way to go. Again, IMO. Allowing the state to tell me what I can and cannot know about my small child just seems insane from my parental perspective.
Adults can be really bad at decision making too.
Adults can be really bad at decision making too.[/quote]
And so can counselors. People aren’t perfect. But kids are immature and confused and have very little life experience.
The perfect world with the easy answers just isn’t here, as much as we’d all like it to be. If someone comes up with the right answer to this one, I’ll vote for them.
Don’t people like him go to Purgatory?
And so can counselors. [/quote]
Okay, I thought I was done with this, but I was thinking about it at lunch (damn you, Jeff Lackey, damn you to hell)…how do you respond to this argument: I agree with you that counselors are subject to imperfect controls and selection criteria and, therefore, some of them are not very good at counseling. But parents are subject to no controls or selection criteria, so I think it’s more likely that a random parent will be a bad decisionmaking assistant than it is that a random counselor will. If the goal of the law is to make sure first and foremost that the pregnant girl makes the best possible decision for her, wouldn’t a counselor be at least as good as a parent at helping her come to a decision? Although a counselor might lack the intimate knowledge of the girl that the parent has, the counselor has the benefit of training and presumably being motivated to do this sort of work, and the experience of working with other girls.
Of course, that tosses aside any concern the law might have with protecting a parent’s legitimate interest in being involved with their kid’s life. But isn’t it possible that A) the need to make sure the kid makes the best possible decision, and B) the kid’s legitimate desire for privacy, especially if her parents are abusive or estranged, outweigh a parent’s desire to be involved if their kid doesn’t want them to be?
What the heck? People object to parental notification laws because kids who’ve been knocked up by a relative (happens way too often) tend to be in hell of a fix when they have to notify family that Dad or an uncle knocked 'em up.
I figure if you’re old enough to get pregnant you’re old enough to decide how to handle the results. Although, come to think of it, if pregnancy decisionmaking is allocated to the parents because the kids are too young, shouldn’t who kids have sex with be the parents decision? “It’s ok, officer, I said she could do that guy.”
It’s not the stranger cutting her out of your life. It’s your daughter. We’re not talking about a law forbidding children from telling their parents; we’re just talking about whether there should be a law requiring that, or that plus the parent’s permission. If your daughter decides she wants to make this decision without you, shouldn’t she be able to?
I don’t mean to make this all personal. I’m just addressing the concerns they way you’ve laid them out.[/quote]
I don’t take it personally - really. This is a difficult situation, and good people have differences of opinions.
Should a 15 year old be able to decide whether she can have an abortion without telling her parents? Well, that’s what we’re arguing, right? I say no - believe me, kids that age aren’t the best decision makers in the world. They don’t get to decide whether to legally smoke or drink or watch any movie they like or go on a field trip or get married or drive a car, etc. etc. etc.[/quote]
You know, there’s a pretty relevant point there that’s Jeff’s overlooking, I think. If you’re a loving, supportive parent, and you’ve raised your child as best as you can, shouldn’t you trust them to make the right decision in a situation like this? You seem adamantly certain that children from loving, supportive, fully-functional families are going to invariably decide to run to an abortion clinic without saying a word to their loving, supportive, fully functional folks. Why have you reached that conclusion, and if that’s the case, what does it say about the parents that the child felt so shamed and afraid that she couldn’t trust her parents with the information?
I really think you’re misreading the situation, Jeff.
I’m absolutely predudiced on this issue by two things. One is raising two girls and a boy, all three great kids thank God, and watching them do absolutely wacko things and make absolutely crazy and immature decisions. Any parent of kids these age know exactly what I’m talking about. Your kids can come into your room one day, put their arms around your neck and share some really tough problem they’re having one day, then the next be afraid to tell you that they broke the lamp in the den and try to hide the pieces in the fireplace. Put them in a situation as traumatic as being pregnant with an unplanned kid - I’d really hope that my girls would come to me, but panic would be a common feeling. I also think that you might have a number of kids who would ordinarily suck it up and talk to their parents who might not if they thought there was an easy out - go to a counselor and get an abortion without ever telling mom and dad and hope they never find out.
The other reason for my predudice is working with teens in a counselor type role for about 17 years. I’ve seen really good kids from really great families do some really stupid things. Hell, it’s a miracle I’m alive when I look at some of the decisions I made as a teen (and the things I hid from my parents, who were/are wonderful.)
Like I said, I understand where some folks are coming from, I just don’t agree. No prob.
At the end of the day that doesn’t solve the problem of who’s best placed to make the decision.
My opinion is first and foremost the person most affected is the young girl who is pregnant. That is why I lean to anything that considers her first.