Quote:
Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
She's getting an abortion b/c she wants a fetus vacuumed out of her uterus which means she doesn't want to parent it or go full term and have someone else parent it. If she wanted input from the parents or advice she would ask for it. This is imposing parental input when the daughter does NOT want it. You have a person who wants the fetus OUT, and also does NOT wish to discuss it with her parents. That should be the end of the story.
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This is lame, and is primarily the kind of viewpoint Hilary Clinton wants to overshadow in order to remove abortion as the Achilles heel of the Dems. This all-out devotion to the idea of "choice" at the expense of logic leaves you looking fanatical and unrealistic.
You have a minor who wants a medical procedure performed on her, which can have long-lasting consequences both emotional and physical. Many states don't allow her to get her ears pierced without parental permission, but your blind service to "choice" warrants an exception here? I think not.
As a law student, I clerked for the only judge around who would hear the bypass motions. We did about forty per year. He would ask why they needed to keep this from their parents. Generally, the answer was "well, like, my mom and dad would be really pissed at me". He'd ask them about violence - past, present, fear of - and there would be nothing. (Believe me - the very few times when there was a real danger, the accompanying PP social worker would be all over it - "father has been reported to the police in the past for screaming at daughter", "father has been accused of slapping daughter" - so, it's not that the judge just wasn't getting a response.) He'd almost always sign off on the request. My impression was usually that, if the parents got notified, the kid would simply accept it and move on, but the PP worker would have a flaming cow.
They're kids. There are adequate safeguards for when they have good reason not to go to their parents. We don't nudge the parents out of the picture merely to serve your social causes. It was dangerous, back in junior high, to tell your parents that you got caught with a joint - but they didn't give us the secrecy option for that. I think you value this "choice" concept higher than you value the lives of all the kids who need parental presence in this situation.
(ETA - I should have STPed before posting. Looks like all this ground got covered yesterday. Never mind.)
