Last summer, a bill was introduced – the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (H.R. 2299) – which would make it illegal to take minors across state lines without parental consent to get an abortion, in order to circumvent a state’s parental notification laws. One would think that, regardless of your position on abortion, that this would be a fairly non-controversial bill. After all, who would want to argue that the government should have the ability to take parental rights away, especially when it comes to subjecting young girls to surgery?
Of course, abortion advocates don’t care about things like that. Nothing is allowed to come before their sacred cow of abortion — not parental rights, not the safety of young girls, nothing. Anything that might hinder the ability for anyone to get an abortion at any time, for any reason, is considered an attack on women’s rights. To them, women’s rights equal abortion and nothing else. It makes sense, really. When the worth of a woman is valued at nothing more than her ability to use her reproductive organs without consequence, then abortion would surely be the most important part.
One woman put this attitude on display during her testimony at a Congressional hearing about the bill. Dr. Katherine Hancock, an Episcopal priest, is a radical abortion and gay rights activist. She testified that she would willingly break this law and take minors across state lines to get abortions, without parental consent.
Appearing as a Democratic Party witness at a hearing of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, president and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. recalled the time she took a 15-year-old girl she had never met before to get an abortion.
“Although New Hampshire was closer to that girl’s home than Boston, as it happened, I did not take her across state lines,” Ragsdale said. “Nor did I, to my knowledge, break any laws.
“But if either of those things had been necessary in order to help her, I would have done them,” she continued. “And if helping young women like her should be made illegal I will, nonetheless, continue to do it.”
Ragsdale cited her vows as an Episcopal priest as the reason why she would “have no choice” but to break the law.
This is a shocking display of utter contempt for the right of a parent to make decisions on behalf of their child. It’s never acceptable for another adult to make a decision on behalf of a minor child who is not their parent, and especially not to subject the child to a major medical procedure which could have serious complications.
It’s also scary to think that a young, impressionable teenage girl could be in the hands of a radical abortion activist, who is also a priest, and claims it is her Christian duty to facilitate abortions. When that young girl goes to her priest at church, pregnant, scared, and confused, is Dr. Hancock likely to have the girl’s best interest at heart? Will she actually listen to her and give her fair counsel? Or would she see an opportunity to spread her pro-abortion propaganda and manipulate the girl into having an abortion, even against the will of her parents? Given that Dr. Hancock considers abortion to be a “blessing”, it’s a very frightening thought indeed.
Another scary thought? Not everyone is a trustworthy priest, just looking to help a young girl out who got herself into trouble. As Live Action’s Trafficking Project discovered, Planned Parenthood clinics across the country were all too happy to cover up child sex trafficking in order to get the lucrative paycheck that comes from performing abortions. Live Action also uncovered multiple violations where young girls were abducted and raped, and then taken to Planned Parenthood and forced into abortions. These crimes were never reported, of course. There was a 13-year-old girl impregnated by her 39-year-old stepfather and forced to have a late-term abortion, an 11-year-old girl who told Planned Parenthood staffers she was raped by her 17-year-old boyfriend, a 13-year-old girl repeatedly molested by her 23-year-old foster brother and subjected to two abortions.
Then there was 41-year-old Adam Gault, who abducted 14-year-old Danielle Cramer, and forced her to have an abortion after he impregnated her.
How much easier would it be for sex traffickers, kidnappers, and pedophiles to force their victims into abortions and continue their abuse if parental notification isn’t required? Not everyone’s intentions are as… ahem… honorable as Dr. Hancock’s. Parental notification laws don’t just protect parental rights, they help protect young girls as well. And adults who flout parental notification laws should be held accountable.
