Since I'm not a parent, I really ought not weigh in on the parental notification law. But.

I definitely understand Cindy's viewpoint, that knowing her daughter had an abortion would be (in the simplest terms) another piece of knowledge that would help her to be a good parent to her child.

But there are a lot of big and scary things that teenagers go through that they keep secret from their parents, and no law exists that can make them be honest when they damn well don't want to. If your daughter were raped and she didn't go to the hospital or police, and she didn't tell you, there is no way you could know. And that's certainly on a par with having an abortion, emotionally.

Also, I think the parental notification law furthers the notion that children are chattel, who have no agency of their own, no control over what goes on in their lives. It says, basically, "Hey girls -- your bodies aren't your own. You do NOT get to decide what happens to your bodies."

And that disturbs me.

Where I'm coming down is, IF it's a dichotomy between protecting the rights of the girl raped by her step-father and protecting the rights of the loving mother? I pick the girl.

But if some 30-year-old teacher has gotten a 12-year-old student pregnant, I would say the opposite.

In this case, it's statutory rape and covered under those laws.

But there are a lot of big and scary things that teenagers go through that they keep secret from their parents,

Like, nearly everything, IME.

In an ideal world, parental rights would be uppermost, but we don't live in that world. I see it as akin to child abuse reporting laws--the possiblity of harm is so great in the immediate moment that parental rights come second until the child is safe. In an ideal world, where all parents had their childrens' best interests at heart, a kid showing up at school with a bruised arm would not cause authorities to show up at a family's home and grill the parents, but we don't live in that world--and good parents are the ones who suffer a loss of rights.

I'm not sure a "right to parent" is at issue here-- it seems to be a "right to stop your child's abortion."

Where I'm coming down is, IF it's a dichotomy between protecting the rights of the girl raped by her step-father and protecting the rights of the loving mother? I pick the girl.

Exactly. There's no contest in my mind.

In this case, it's statutory rape and covered under those laws.

But would Planned Parenthood (or whoever) report that to the authorities? I thought that they didn't, and that pro-life activists had been making a big fuss about that fairly recently.

IF it's a dichotomy between protecting the rights of the girl raped by her step-father and protecting the rights of the loving mother? I pick the girl.

On the other hand, it could be argued that in protecting the girl, you're also protecting the stepfather.

As I've said, my feelings on this are complicated. In the end, I come down on the side of less regulation of abortion vs. more, but I would hope Planned Parenthood and similar programs would offer more help to girls who were victims of incest or rape than just the abortion.

Also, I think the parental notification law furthers the notion that children are chattel, who have no agency of their own, no control over what goes on in their lives.

The law gives a lot of authority to parents of minor children. I can see Cindy's point that it doesn't make a lot of sense to allow a minor to decide to have an abortion without parental notification but not to make a million other decisions. (Though there's also an argument that, once the child has reached the legal age of consent to have sex, the child is also old enough to consent to an abortion. But I've been fighting a cold for several days, and my sinuses are still plugged up, so I don't have the energy to make it.)

A question for the hivemind -- What would happen if the minor makes an investigation-worthy claim that her parents would hurt/kill her if they found out she'd become pregnant? What are the odds that she'd be sent back to her parents while an investigation went on? Because there's a built-in time limit to reach a decision -- she could only hide the pregnancy for so long.