One of the surest ways to tell if somebody’s an extremist is to see whether their words are proportionate to what they’re discussing. Pro-lifers, for instance, believe that killing a pre-implantation embryo via abortifacient drugs and killing a developed, pain-capable fetus by partially delivering her and stabbing her skull are equally wrong, but we can see clear differences in the moral intentions of those who support one versus the other.
Pro-aborts tend to recognize no such distinctions, and the latest manifestation of that tendency is a doozy. At the Daily Kos, Bimmerella Zone freaks out that the latest abortion bill to pass the Missouri House of Representatives has “only ONE reason” to exist—“shaming teens”—and has the effect of making them “second class citizens.” Democrat state Representative Genise Montecillo calls it “absolutely cruel.” Her fellow Democrat Stacey Newman said it forced teens to follow pro-lifers’ “religious beliefs.”
Whoa, it must be pretty bad if people who disagree can see only malice and theology instead of decent and secular motivations behind it. So what does this demonic legislation do?
It strengthens Missouri’s current parental consent law, which requires minors to get the permission of one parent for an abortion, by requiring that the second parent be notified (not give consent) as well.
Seriously, that’s it. It doesn’t reduce a teenager’s likelihood of getting an abortion in any other way. It doesn’t tighten the state’s relatively-weak parental bypass option, which does not require a judge to base his decision on specific criteria or the “clear and convincing evidence” standard. It just requires that both parents know that their child is making such an irreversible, life-altering decision.
But this is absolutely unthinkable to pro-aborts (and yet, they continue insisting they’re “pro-choice, not pro-abortion”). They expect us to believe they cannot conceive of a single reason both Mom and Dad deserve to know. Hey, I just thought of one: cases like this one documented by my Live Action colleague Carole Novielli, in which a California man took his thirteen-year-old daughter to Planned Parenthood—twice—to abort the babies he impregnated her with. Planned Parenthood didn’t report either incident, despite knowing that, at the very least, statutory rape had occurred. Only after her older sister (whom Dad was also molesting) went to the police did the abuse stop.
Considering Planned Parenthood was worse than useless in protecting her (Carole’s links, as well as Live Action’s undercover investigations, show this sort of thing is not uncommon), requiring both parents to know what’s going is an obvious check against a rapist father—the very sort of abusive parent the bill’s foes claim to be protecting children from—using secret abortions to continue raping his daughters under their mother’s nose.
Missouri ACLU director Jeffrey Mittman at least presents an argument: “No bill can account for every family dynamic that would lead a parent to decide that it is unsafe and unwise to involve the other in such a personal decision.” But that’s why the bill expressly does not apply to parents who’ve been found guilty of child abuse, neglect, substance abuse, or sex offenses, or is the subject of a protection order.
It’s true that no law can fully predict or compensate for every possible variable in individual cases. But we can do much better than the status quo, which when dominated by pro-aborts doesn’t even try to protect women and girls from the physical and mental danger of “safe” abortions, the abortion industry’s disregard for their welfare, or the sinister uses to which abusers can put abortion.
