hadespussercats wrote:Seth wrote:hadespussercats wrote:Seth wrote:Are you really supporting the notion that a 15 year old can make rational, competent, healthy decisions about her sexuality or pregnancy without any parental oversight or consultation? Really? Have you ever had children?
Yet this girl would make a good parent? Good parenting does require rational, competent, healthy decision-making. But then, you might not be aware of that, since you've never had children.
A teenage mother is not axiomatically on her own in parenting her child, there are plenty of resources available both within the family and without, and it's my observation that in most cases, when a woman (including a teen-age woman) has a child, it has a substantial positive effect on focusing her attention on proper child care.
The notion that an abortion is the only or even the best answer to teenage pregnancy is nothing more than an ideological knee-jerk snap judgment that fails to look carefully at all the facts and circumstances.
Whether a teenaged girl could be a good mother or not is not the concern of parental consent laws.
It should be, since that's the concern of the parents as well.
Parents are not generally granted the right to force their daughter who wants to carry to term to have an abortion.
They should be. If they have the legal authority to consent to their daughter's desire for an abortion, the legal authority to force the child to have an abortion is implied in the same way that the legal authority to consent to a child having an appendectomy is equivalent to the legal authority to force the child to have an appendectomy against the child's wishes.
That's what parental authority is, the legal authority to make decisions regarding the best interests and health, safety and welfare of one's child, whether the child agrees or consents or not.
And the issue of notification and consent only arises when a daughter who is pregnant wants to terminate-- the parents' consent was not required for her to become pregnant (I am speaking de facto here-- I recognize your point that parents can forbid their minor children to have sex.
I'm sorry, but you can't use the argumentum ad populum ("everybody's doing it") fallacy as a valid argument against the legal right of a parent to either consent to or require a minor child to have an abortion. It's absolutely pertinent that a parent has the legal right to forbid and prevent, using any reasonable means, their minor child from having sex. And just as that legal authority exists on the part of the parent, so does the legal authority to consent to or force a child to have a necessary surgical procedure if it is in the best interest of the child. What the surgical procedure is is entirely irrelevant. If a parent can force a child to get braces, or have an appendix or tonsils out, or have cancer treatments or surgery on a broken leg, the parent can just as lawfully, morally and ethically require a minor child to have an abortion. There is no distinction whatever to be made between one type of medical procedure an another in that regard.
But many of those children still find a way, in a story as old as Adam-- literally.) Nor would their consent be required for their daughter to give birth-- even if they were four-square against the notion.
Fallacious argumentum ad populum.
The only time parental consent is an applicable issue is when a minor daughter wants to have an abortion and her parents want her to carry the pregnancy to term. It's a measure that's not about promoting healthy communication among family members-- it's about stopping abortions from happening.
That's your take on it, but that's not the only light in which the situation can be viewed. Not by half. Parents have a valid reason to prohibit a minor child from having an abortion on mental health grounds. There are legions of stories from women who have had abortions who have suffered severe mental illness as a result, and have publicly stated how much they regret making that decision. No small number of these women have committed suicide or become functionally disabled as a result, and I know one such woman, who had an abortion as a 15 year old, personally. She is now 40 and is still struggling with the aftereffects of that bad, bad decision. It's negatively affected her mental health and ability to function in society her whole life.
Abortion is not a harmless procedure like squeezing a zit or removing a mole, no matter how much Planned Parenthood propaganda someone may spout to the contrary. It can have very real, very harmful physical and mental effects that can be lifetime disabilities.
Childbirth, on the other hand, is an entirely natural, if painful and occasionally dangerous event, and it's rarely the childbirth itself that's harmful, it's usually the prospect and obligation of having to raise a child, and in so doing give up all those dreams and hopes for a responsibility-free young adulthood that are the motivation for having the abortion in the first place. The vast majority of abortions are not therapeutic or medically necessary, they are almost all convenience abortions undertaken to pander to the selfish personal desires of the imprudent and careless woman who does not wish to face the consequences of her sexual indiscretions and failure to make good judgments.
I have no quarrel with medically necessary abortions that are required to protect the life or long-term health of the mother or where a fetus is known to be fatally defective, but convenience abortions are just manifestations of the sort of selfish, self-involved, arrogant refusal to use good judgment and accept the consequences of the voluntary act of having sex that are destroying the moral fabric of the world.
Abortions may not be the only answer to teen pregnancy, and in certain cases abortion might not be the best choice for an individual. But that choice needs to belong to the individual in question. Parents don't own their daughters' bodies.
No, but they have legal control of them, particularly when it comes to medical procedures, which gives them the legal right to refuse to allow an unnecessary, dangerous and harmful medical procedure to be performed on their child.
You might point out again that parents can make the choice for their daughter to have her appendix removed. Could those parents choose for their daughter to have to keep that diseased appendix, though?
Yes, in some cases, such as adherents to Christian Science. It must be noted however that the right of parents to refuse necessary life-saving medical care for their children on a religious basis is very tenuous these days, which is something that I actually agree with. But it must be noted that neither pregnancy and carrying a child to term, or abortion are in the same class as a burst appendix. Neither is an immediate threat to the life of the child, and both are usually survivable and generally physically harmless if things go as planned.
So you cannot rationally compare either childbirth or abortion to a refusal to treat a burst appendix, which is a known medical life-and-death emergency where parents do not, and should not, have the choice to deny reasonable medical treatment for the child. It's an apples/oranges comparison.
Parents are stewards for their children, with enormous responsibilities that shift and change, and ultimately fade. Their rights over their children's autonomy have limits.
Of course there are limits, but either consenting to or mandating an abortion for a minor child is well within long-established parental authority. What, exactly, would distinguish between a requirement by a parent that a child submit to surgery for a burst appendix from a similar requirement that the child either have an abortion or not have an abortion? What's so special about the fact that the medical decision involved is about sex and reproduction that it would rationally or logically place the child's desires above the parental determination of what's best for that particular child?
I say it's not really about a rational distinction being drawn between parental control of one medical procedure or another, I say your argument is solely based in a political and philosophical objection to ANYONE having the power to control whether or not an abortion can be freely procured by ANY member of the female gender, no matter how young, old, competent or incompetent she may be. I see your argument as a continuation of the absolutist, no-compromise, no reason or rationality, mindless defense of the "right to abortion" that radical feminism insists is untouchable and beyond any review or regulation by society for any reason whatsoever.
And it is precisely this sort of absolutist, radical, feminist-fundamentalist refusal to acknowledge that there may be times when a woman (or girl) should NOT have a "right to abortion" that is utterly unfettered and not subject to any constraint or regulation that damages the legitimate arguments surrounding the abortion debate that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare."
When abortion proponents refuse to acknowledge that abortions can be harmful and deadly and that therefore there is legitimate authority on the part of the government to regulate abortion as a part of it's inherent police powers, they marginalize themselves as irrational zealots who should be, and justifiably are, marginalized, rejected, and ignored.
Which makes Planned Parenthood (which is only in the abortion business for the money, no matter what anyone cares to say to the contrary), the chief purveyor of abortion-proponent lies, the chief enemy of everyone with reason and nuance of thought.
Not to mention the fact that it's a nationwide criminal enterprise that should be taken down and prosecuted under the RICO Act and various child-protection laws for illegally providing abortion services to minors in violation of many laws.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
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