El derecho de un padre a saber - proposición 85

A PARENTS’ RIGHT TO KNOW: The Debate about Proposition 85
A pregnant teenage girl from a violent home would be at great risk of danger, physical and psychological, if she told her parents about her problem and decision. Dysfunctional families cannot be corrected by amendments and laws written in the constitution. Trust is a virtue of family, constructed day by day.

On Tuesday, November 7,2006, the State of California went to the ballot boxes to vote on an amendment to a law passed in 1953 1. The state law was enacted to allow minors to receive, without parental consent or notification, the same types of medical care for pregnancy that are available to adults. Based on this law and later legal developments related to abortion, the right of unmarried female minors in California to havean abortion without notifying their parents or guardians has been granted. This law has been an issue of debate in this state since last fall, when it lost the possibility for change. The result of this year’s election was 54.1% against the proposal, thereby rejecting a change in the state’s law again2.

The amendment was called Proposition 85 and supported the parent’s right to be notified 48hours in advance of an abortion procedure on an unmarried

1

The League of Women Voters of California, November 2006 http://ca.lwv.org/lwvc/edfund/elections/2006nov/id/prop85.html (16 December 2006)
2

California's Resource for Health-Related Ballot Measures, HealthVote.org, November 2006 (16 December 2006).

female minor. There are 26 states in the U.S. that have in theirconstitutions a law that forces physicians to notify at least one legal guardian before performing an abortion procedure on a minor; other states require parental consent 3. The amendment sought the right of a parent just to be notified; the parent didn’t have to agree on the performance of the procedure.

Worldwide, it is estimated that 46 million abortions are performed each year; of those, 20 million areillegal 4. A clandestine abortion will put women in more risk of having infections, heavy bleeding, organ damage in the form of uterus perforation, and even death 5. Minors who come from violent homes when pregnant are more likely to seek clandestine abortions and face these kinds of consequences. This is the main reason why opponents to Prop 85 oppose the amendment; they state that teenagers whoare afraid to tell their parents or to go to a judge may turn to unsafe abortions. They may go to other countries, such as Mexico, where they could get cheaper procedures without appropriate supervision.

The people who have proposed the correction of the law claim that more than 30 other states in the Union have benefited from laws like this one, and that

3

Facts About Children and theLaw (16 December 2006).
4

Abortion Facts, The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, 2003 http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html (16 December 2006).
5

Learn About Abortion Procedures and Abortion Risks, Option Line, (16 December 2006).

even sometimes minors avoid pregnancy because of these types of laws. But the opposition says that these minors can possibly look for doctors whowill perform abortion procedures in other states that don’t have these laws.

The main reason why organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Civil Liberties Union (of Northern and Southern California), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the California Medical Association have opposed the change is because, according to statistics reported by theUniversity of California at San Francisco and the State Department of Health Services, a steady decrease in the pregnancy and abortion rate among teenagers has been measured in the last 13 years without any change in the law, and they are afraid that changing the law will put the most vulnerable group of teens at risk. From 1994 to 2004, there was a cut by 46% on the rate of unwanted pregnancies...