QuestionHi,
I'm doing a research project involving teenage abortions and parental consent. I've taken the stand that teenage abortions should require parental consent, however I would like to make my case strong.
Could you tell me, why parental consent should be required, from an experts point of view? Also, what are the risks of not having parental consent? Does not having parental consent injure family relations? Also, is there anything else that you would like to add regarding not having parental consent when it comes to teenage abortions?
Thank you,
AnswerHello, vanessa,
You're welcome.
In no particular order...
The daughter is carrying their grandchild, and she is considering destroying this grandchild. A lot of parents will be very upset if they learn they never had a say. I told our children in no uncertain terms they would be disinherited if they ever got involved in abortion. Many parents will be upset at first when they find out their daughter is pregnant. This is to be expected. In my experience, most parents also become very supportive before very long. This is true even in Asian countries, where the social penalty for having a baby out of wedlock is much more severe than it is here. The situation with Muslim families is much more complex, but since you are in the United States, I'll leave that for another discussion. Does concealing an abortion from parents cause problems with family relations? ABSOLUTELY!
Most women aren't informed of the dangers of abortion, nor are they informed of the emotional and spiritual consequences. Many women are coerced into abortion by the father of the child. If the teenager doesn't tell her parents, she has to face this coercion all alone. Granted, some parents will try to coerce their daughter INTO an abortion, but if they do, I consider that child abuse. The daughter should defend herself in the same way she would against any other child abuse. Another aspect is that sometimes the father of the teenager is molesting her, and she becomes pregnant. In that case, the teenager will usually want to carry the baby so that the abuse will be revealed. The father may try to coerce her into an abortion. If she doesn't tell her mother what is going on, again, she has to face all of this alone.
There are some very practical reasons why a daughter should tell her parents and get their consent. For one thing, if she suffers a complication, THEY will have to pay her medical bills. Not having a say in the decision in the first place is very unfair. There have been cases where parents found out, all right, when they were asked to come down to the coroner's office to identify their daughter's body. Complications are common. EVERY abortion harms a woman's body, and the amount of harm can vary widely from one situation to another. Abortionists in the United States make no attempt to determine if abortion is really what the teenager wants. They don't want to lose a sale. They make no attempt to offer any alternatives. They provide shoddy and dangerous care. They have poor medical judgment. They won't necessarily take a medical history, and even if they do, parents may know about a medical condition that would make abortion especially dangerous, that their daughter knows nothing about. Parents can provide significant help to their daughter IF they know about the situation. The parents are not only responsible for the bills for any emergency medical care needed, but they are also legally responsible for what their daughter does.
Laws requiring parental knowledge or consent do stop many abortions. The daughter is spared a lifetime of suffering and grief. In states that have such laws, the unplanned pregnancy rate also drops, and so does the rate of unwed births.
Daughters usually don't want to tell their parents because they don't want their parents to know they have been sleeping around. That is understandable. But as a method of keeping this secret, because of all the problems involved, it simply doesn't work very well. Even if nothing else goes wrong, if anybody knows about the abortion, the secret can be revealed. At the very least, SHE knows about it. And if anybody else does, they can use it to blackmail her.
I'll tell you of a case I know about personally. This was a teenager who dated a man who invited her to meet with some of his friends in a remote place. She agreed, they went, and they were all alone. He raped her. She became pregnant and had an abortion. It totally changed her personality. Her parents never found out why. They just knew that something drastic had happened to their daughter. The result was that she proved incapable of living in any kind of close relationship. She was constantly threatening violence, and she was in and out of mental hospitals. Ten years later, it destroyed her marriage. Her concern at the time had been somewhat justified, because her parents are Asian. But it could have been handled without destroying her life. I know this case well, because I spent time with her when she was in the mental hospital. In cases like this, it is common for the teenager to develop one of a number of emotional problems, and without the knowledge that she has had an abortion, nobody knows why.
If a teenager wants to have her ears pierced, in some places she is required to get her parents' consent. If they want to give her an aspirin in school, she has to have her parents' consent. Abortion is a life-changing event that can not only harm her but her future children. And they don't require parental consent? This makes NO sense. And certainly school personnel have absolutely NO right to make a major decision for the child, and especially to take her for a secret abortion. We need to get back to the idea that parents have authority and have a right to exercise it. So many of our problems would be considerably less severe if only we would let parents do their job.
Finally, even parents don't have a right to have their grandchild harmed. But they stand no chance of protecting their grandchild if they don't know about the situation.
Feel free to ask questions. Good luck with your research.
