Parental-notification doesn’t have the desired effect

March 6, 2006

When it comes to abortion, parental-notification proposals tend to be the most awkward for pro-choice advocates. Parents should know what their kids are doing, especially if they’re facing a major personal challenge like an unwanted pregnancy, so parental-notification when it comes to abortion sounds vaguely compelling.

The problem lies in some practical realities — and the political motivation behind these laws. As Matt Yglesias explained well last year:

The main effect of the laws is to intimidate such women out of getting abortions for fear of what their parents (most likely fathers) will do to them if they’re told. Now if you believe abortion is murder, this is a great deal. From within the relevant class of people, a certain number are successfully intimidated out of having abortions. A sub-set of these women probably wind up being subjected to physical abuse by their parents, but a few beatings is a small price to pay for cutting down on the number of baby killers. What’s more, from the crass political perspective, it makes liberals look unreasonable and extreme to propose these laws. And, indeed, it does have that effect. If any Democrat wants to tell me he needs to support parental notification laws to stay electorally viable, I’ll probably believe him.

Still, this stuff sucks. The country does not need more teen mothers, does not need more child abuse, and doesn’t need bus drivers getting thrown in jail for letting pregnant women get on board. To be perfectly frank about it, women under 18 are the last group of people we should be subjecting to intense pressure to carry their pregnancies to term. Arguments that the aggregate impact of these laws will be less teen sex rather than more teen mothers are purely fatuous.

Yglesias was on to something. Today, the New York Times published an analysis of these parental-notification laws highlighting how the proposals haven’t curbed abortions at all.

For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.

The article is definitely worth reading, because the trends are fascinating. Most notably, proponents of parental-consent have suggested there would be fewer abortions because parents wouldn’t allow it. The data shows the opposite: “[S]ome workers and doctors at abortion clinics said that the laws had little connection with the real lives of most teenagers, and that they more often saw parents pressing their daughters to have abortions than trying to stop them.”

its all the fault of those liberials at focus on family, i wonder how they will increase abortions next?

  • Of course. If you are a low-mid income family with the prospect of having to help raise your daughter’s child…another mouth to feed, another kid to clothe…plus your daughter most likely having to drop out of school and/or give up going to college…it becomes an economic decision. For better or worse. I would say this probably even applies to high income families to a smaller degree.

  • I don’t think parental notification laws were trying to place the burden of controlling abortion onto the parents’ shoulders, but rather trying to intimidate teens from having sex in the first place if it becomes widely held that the teen would be forced to tell their parents when opting for the one remedy that would help them keep their activity under wraps.

  • It’s also good news for the pro-choice movement that more parents are pushing their pregnant teens toward abortion. That helps keep abortions legal. Any demographic studies indicating who these parents are, and which party they tend to vote for?

  • um, desired effect? Maybe the desired effect is to communicate to children that sex is stigmatized. On that score, the laws may have been marginally effective.

    Does anyone except those left of center actually care about reducing abortions? It’s not the abortions, it’s the sex.

  • “Any demographic studies indicating who these parents are[?]”

    I don’t have any data but I’m old enough to remember life pre-Roe, when nice girls with $$ got safely shipped off to lawful or at least safe jurisdictions. As my girlfriend used to say of the Virgin Mary–happens in the best Jewish families.

  • I think you’ve reached the wrong conclusion here.

    If parental-consent laws DON’T, in fact, drive down the number of teen abortions, then shouldn’t we, as a general increase-the-number-of-Dems-in-Congress strategy, be ENCOURAGING vulerable Dems in moderate districts to SUPPORT parental-notification laws?

    Yes, it’s the equivalent of Rove’s bait-and-switch-the-Fundies moves, but … so what?

  • Speaking of abortion, it has just moved on the wires — South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds has finally gotten around to signing their abortion ban into law.

  • Interesting. Do they have statistics on the number of runaways changing in any way?

  • You always hear that talking point on parental consent/notification: “Of course I, as a parent, should be notified. Why, my kid can’t even get an aspirin from the school nurse without my consent.” Every time I hear that I just want to slap them and say, no one’s talking about giving abortions in school, you moron! (They never seem to remember that a minor can buy aspirin at any 7-11 without parental consent.)

  • Hey,

    That only works if people think having sex will get them pregnant. And I’m not talking about ill-informed youth. Let’s face it, unprotected sex happens all the time even to those who “know” better, and it likely a combination of feeling awkward about bringing up protection and believing “It won’t happen to me.”

    If high school boys and girls think “It wont’ happen to me” (and really, don’t they all?), parental consent doesn’t work as an intimidater.

  • Parental Consent just slows down the abortion counseling process. The intent is to keep girls from having abortions before a point of fetal development where the pro-lifers can convince most of voting America that abortions should be restricted.

    Build in enough delays and eventually abortion becomes impractical, if not technically illegal.

  • Why, exactly, must parental notification laws be addressed in the context of reproductive rights, teen pregnancy, and abortion? It seems much more accurate for it to be addressed within the context of a parent’s virtually absolute authority over their children.

    Though SCOTUS ruled it absent in the form of listening in on telephone calls, a decision I believe was decided incorrectly, it is assumed, if not state-sanctioned, in a number of areas–the most obvious being in medical decisions. There are of course instances under which this authority is rightly subverted by the state, pertaining mostly in relation to abuse and criminal neglect, and its within this framework that the argument against parental notification laws should be made. That is, there is a compelling interest of the state in allowing this particular medical decision to be made without the consent and approval of a minor’s parent/legal guardian.

    • Comments are closed.