Monday, September 26, 2005
Ooh, looky
In my stroll through various websites, I noticed this whopper from The Bruin's Lara Loewenstein on Prop 73 (the abortion one):
This proposition, if passed, would require women 17 years old and younger to procure parental permission before being able to acquire an abortion.
Actually, it requires notification, not permission, if I'm reading it correctly. This seems as good a time as any to blabber about the upcoming ballot initiatives, starting with Prop 73.
Essentially, Prop 73 says minors need to notify their parents 48 hours before getting an abortion, unless they can come up with an adequate reason not to.
Some notes:
I won't tell anyone if you won't. Well, except I will. One of the exceptions, designed for dealing with asshole parents, is pretty ironic. While the minor who failed to adequately protect herself from pregnancy (hereafter referred to as "the lazy slut" to deal with the vast majority of these cases) can confidentially convince a judge that "notification would not be in the minor's best interests" (i.e. the lazy slut's dad would beat the shit out of her (possibly conveniently providing the abortion, now that I think about it)), she has to convince the judge without any evidence that her parents are abusive, or else that information would be passed on to "the appropriate child protection agency," which, if followed up on, would probably notify the parent indirectly. Here, though, perhaps we can rely on the uselessness of such agencies.
My statistics are appropriately fudged. Are yours? From the argument in favor:
"A study of over 46,000 pregnancies of school-age girls in California found that over two thirds were impregnated by adult men whose mean age was 22.6 years."
You could count the number of ways that data has been carefully and conveniently selected, but it'd be like finding a needle in a bright red box labelled "NEEDLE INSIDE."
The other side makes a good point. Let me state it in my argument. From the argument against:
"Even teenagers who have good relationships with their parents might be afraid to talk to them about something as sensitive as pregnancy."
You wonder why this isn't in the "for" argument. In such cases, usually parental involvement would be helpful, but the lazy sluts just don't want to tell them because it's embarassing or something. Forcing it through law seems to be a good idea, here.
Get your exceptions! Free exceptions! Lazy sluts can also get exceptions if they are "sufficiently mature and well-informed to decide whether to have an abortion." I get the feeling that essentially Prop 73 is more of a recommendation via bureaucracy to convince them to say "Okay, fine, I'll tell Pa." If anyone actually wants to go through the effort of getting an exception, they'll probably get it.
Oooh, free money. If a lazy slut gets an abortion without notification, the aborter is subject to being suez0r3d. Or the parent can get statutory damages of $10,000. Giving false information to convince the aborter that notification is not needed is punishable by a fine of $1,000. I see some profit-making opportunities here, some of which would be great father-daughter bonding experiences.
And now, the endorsement. I don't really think this issue is going to come up for me. I'm a little too old to be getting minors pregnant, and a little too male to be getting abortions. I imagine if I had kids, the issue might arise, but frankly, if this stuff did come up, I'd probably have already failed miserably enough as a father that my knowledge of the matter wouldn't help much. In these cases, total ignorance would work out best for me. Further, since it looks like the measure is going to cost a little bit of money, I'll have to go ahead and vote NO on Prop 73.
Note: All votes are subject to change, especially if purchased (within legal bounds).
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