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.

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

Letting the girl have the abortion now does not keep her from going to the police later. Anyway, I don't really think that the person who's been raped and not gone to the police is going to tell Planned Parenthood how they got pregnant.

I think back to a friend who had an abortion withut telling her parents in high school. I can't imagine what would have happened if she had told them, as they kicked her out of the house when she later came out as gay to them--being told "you are no daughter of mine" is hard at any time, but even worse when you are adopted as she was. She lived in a tent for a few weeks, and then my parents persuaded her to move into our house for six months, at which point she was grudgingly allowed back home.

I think I'm with Cindy on this. Despite the very good arguments for not having parental notification, I think Cindy's right, that there's a deeper problem there than just allowing minor's to get abortions on their own, be it child abuse or molestation. I also want to have the right to parent my child. So if she wants to have an abortion I or my wife (not necessarily both of us need to know) have a chance to counsel her and support her. And I would be pretty annoved if my child's school gave her so much as an aspirin without my consent.

Also, if society feels my 17 year old doesn't have the maturity/responsibility to drink, vote, gamble, view pornography, or enter into binding legal agreements, why would she automatically have the maturity/responsibility to make as important a decision as getting an abortion done? I'm not saying she wouldn't. But the presumption is that most 17 year olds don't. That's why minors are supposed to have parents.

That doesn't negate the fact that there are situations where parental notification is wrong and could be dangerous for the welfare of the minor. In those situations, I think an agency like CPS should be enlisted to evaluate making an exception.