How parental consent laws deprive teenaged women of right to choice

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The pro-choice movement is anxiously awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in two more cases that could adversely affect abortion rights in this country.

On Nov. 29, 1989, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Hodgson v. State of Minnesota and Ohio y. Akron Center for Reproductive Health. Both cases concern the constitutionality of parental consent and notification laws for teenaged women seeking abortion. The Court has until this July to announce its decision.

The Minnesota Minors' Consent Act requires a health provider to notify both biological parents of a minor prior to performing an abortion. The law makes no exception for teens of divorced parents or couples who are not married, or for teens who are already married or have children.

The Ohio statute involves a complicated judicial waiver process which súbjects minors to an exceptionally rigorous standard of proof of harm if parents are notified. The waiver process often takes up to 23 days. This delay increases the need for secondtrimester abortions, which are more dangerous than early abortions.

The Supreme Court's decision will have a great impact on minors' access to abortion. Currently, 34 states have parental consent or notification laws; 26 states provide for a judicial waiver process.

The state makes the choice Testimony in Hodgson established that the statute had caused an increase in both the teenage birth rate and the number of dangerous second-trimester abortions. The evidence was gathered throughout the four and one- half years since the law has been enforced.

Parental consent laws demonstrate the hypocritical treatment of minors' reproductive rights in this country. While the laws are based on the belief that minors are not mature enough to make a decision regarding abortion, no such "maturity standards" exist for access to pre-natal care, or labor and delivery care. The state makes one choice accessible while denying another; in essence, the state makes the choice for the minor.

And the choice made by the state has a potentially devastating-and lifelong-effect on teenaged women. Each year more than 1 million minors become pregnant. In fact, 40 percent of American women become pregnant at least once during their teen years. Most who carry the pregnancy to term keep the baby rather than placing it for adoption.

Studies on women who place their children for adoption show a higher incidence of psychological trauma than for women who choose abortion.

Eighty percent of pregnant teenaged women drop out of high school, thereby immediately reducing their potential for a decent standard of living. Statistics show that 51 percent of families living in poverty are headed by women; of which 40 percent work outside the home.

Yet public-funded programs for low-income women with children are constantly being cut back. Parental consent laws, which create more families of single women, perpetuate the cycle of poverty among women.

Help the family "communicate?"

Proponents of parental consent laws claim that the laws foster intra-family communication. This has not been shown to be the case. In families where parents and children have established good communication, teens involve their parents in decisions regarding unwanted pregnancies. This happens in the majority of cases.

But in dysfunctional families, where children and parents cannot communicate, these laws only aggravate the existing conflicts. For teenaged victims of incest, for example, laws which involve the rapist in the decision are nothing short of cruel punishment for the victim.

The judicial waiver process provides no solution for teens in difficult situations. Minors do not usually have access to lawyers or knowledge of how to initiate legal proceedings. Moreover, the court process is intimidating for people in general, especially teenaged women.

In reality, the laws have nothing to do with protecting minors or fostering better communication between parents and children. The laws are designed to stop abortion by making it inaccessible to women below a certain age level.

States generally require parental consent before invasive medical treatment, such as surgery, for minors in non-emergency situations. But just as generally, exceptions are made for intimate matters such as venereal disease, AIDS, and pre-natal care.

These exceptions recognize the importance of confidential access to reproductive healthcare for minors-—a rationale that must also apply to abortions.

Denying safe, legal and accessible abortion to teenaged women is especially dangerous, as minors are more likely to let nothing stand in their way of getting an abortion if they want one. If they are unable to skirt parental consent laws, desperate minors will seek out illegal abortions, or attempt to selfThousands of teenaged women demonstrated in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 12 to defend abortion rights.

induce one.

Already we have seen the tragic consequences of these parental consent laws. In 1988, Becky Bell, a pregnant teenager in Indiana (which has a parental notification law), died of a self-induced abortion rather than involve her parents in the decision to end an unwanted pregancy. Her father, William Bell, is now touring the country to alert parents that these laws do not help teens-they can potentially kill them.

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KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF OUR Tina Beacock/Socialist Action