Pangloss vs. Parental Notification

By Jedmunds

Jumping off of Neil’s post on parental consent laws below, which I think is essentially correct. Briefly, a child needs her parents’ permission to get a tattoo, because she doesn’t have a fundamental right to a tattoo. It’s a choice, if postponed, that isn’t going to irreparably damage the child. And before you go around giving some kid over the counter medications, you should check with her parents first, for the child’s protection with respect to adverse affects or any number of imaginable dangers. But mummy and daddy do not get to decide whether or not their daughter should spend nine-months undergoing a pregnancy and dealing with all of the awesome responsibilities that go with giving birth. Just as the government does not get to decide this for adults, mothers don’t get to decide it for their daughters. We can wring our hands as excessively as we want about it, but there’s really no better alternative.

But I think we focus too much on the word “consent,” in what are really parental notification laws. I, until very recently, was uniformly and absolutely opposed to parental notification laws because I felt it quite likely that it placed an undue burden on at least some girls’ right to exercise her right to autonomy over her own body. I’m not so sure anymore. I think that issue is still very much in play for a large number of young girls facing pregnancy. But I now think there may be other issues to consider as well when we allow children to get abortions without their parents knowledge, such as the case of the hypothetical 13 year old molested by the father of the children she baby-sits. How easy is it for this man, where that 13 year old can get an abortion without parental notice, to further manipulate the girl and cover his crimes? 

I’m not sure how heavily to weigh this sort of issue in terms of balancing the pros and cons of parental notification laws. How remote is the scenario first of all? I’m not a social scientist or anything, but I have what you might call a hunch that there is quite likely something terribly wrong happening when a girl under the age of 16 ends up pregnant. And my instinct tells me that alerting the parents might help to illuminate this wrongdoing for the protection of the child. But we can also imagine some pretty stark countervailing scenarios, involving crazy parents and unreasonable unproductive solutions.

Because of this, I think I still tend to lean against parental notification laws. While surely we can hypothesize a situation we’re such laws would be good for everyone. In most of the situations I can imagine, I don’t think we have a better option than placing some faith in the would be mother, most aware of all the circumstances, to make the decision that would be best for herself, which includes whether or not her parents need to know about it. And I’m not saying that that’s ideal either. But in the world we live in, it’s maybe the best of all possibilities. And while I don’t think anyone wants to imagine their daughter having an abortion alone without their knowledge and advice, all of the good loving parents out there should hopefully be able to trust that they’re raising good kids who will seek their help when they need it. But I know also how unfair and unreasonable it is to expect that of adolescent kids no matter how good their parents are.

For more, check out Jill from Feministe's, post on one actual consequence of such laws.