Alaska teens can make own abortion decision

[1069]

Alaska teens can make own abortion decision

By SHEILA TOOMEY
Anchorage Daily News
November 3, 2007

The Alaska Supreme Court threw out an embattled state law Friday that required parental or judicial consent before a teenager can have an abortion.

In a 3-2 decision, the court said the consent requirement robs a pregnant teen of her constitutional right to make such an important decision herself and transfers that right to her parents or a judge.

However, a law that required parents to be notified of a juvenile daughter's plan to have an abortion would probably be all right, said Chief Justice Dana Fabe in the majority decision for the court. It's a option many other states use, she noted.

As illustrated by the vote, the decision was a close call. Both sides agreed that the state has a compelling interest in protecting juvenile girls against their own immaturity and that parents have a constitutional right -- a duty -- to guide their children. They differed over whether giving parents veto power over a pregnant juvenile's abortion decision went too far.

In general, when the state rolls over an individual right, even for a good and important reason, it must do so in the least restrictive manner. Allowing parents or a judge to require a teenager to have a baby "does not strike the proper constitutional balance" between the state's interests and "the fundamental rights of its citizens," the court said.

The dissenting opinion, written by Justice Walter Carpeneti for himself and Justice Warren Matthews, said requiring parental consent does not cross the line.

The state Legislature carefully balanced all competing rights involved, Carpeneti said, and correctly concluded that requiring parental or judicial consent for an abortion "is the least restrictive alternative which will effectively advance the state's compelling interests while protecting the child's constitutional right."

>snip<

link

 

[Edify_Always_In_All_Ways]

Thanks for the update. Long live reproductive freedom!

 

[bhkad]

Thanks for the update. Long live reproductive freedom!

It's a license to kill babies because some people can't be bothered with contraception.

If you know you can't kill your mistakes maybe you will take greater care not to make them???

Gee, what a concept!

Irresponsible fvcking is more important to y'all than the lives of unborn babies.

 

[1069]

It's a license to kill babies because some people can't be bothered with contraception.

If you know you can't kill your mistakes maybe you will take greater care not to make them???

Gee, what a concept!

Irresponsible fvcking is more important to y'all than the lives of unborn babies.

Here, I made you a cool new BINGO game to play at your next Knights of Columbus meeting, all proceeds to benefit the "SaveThePweshussWittleFetusesFromThe SluttyMurderingWhores" foundation.

Have a blast.

 

[Thelost1]

Ah, good. I never understood why one's parents should be allowed to make a decision about abortion for one.

 

[CaptainCourtesy]

In the state that I live, girls under the age of 18 can have an abortion without parental consent or notification.

 

[rathi]

Parental consent should not be required. This is more about the rights of of minors than abortion rights. As long as abortion for adults is legal, so must it be for kids. Minors may be deprived of certain rights, but this is not a case where it is acceptable. Minors have the same rights to their body that adults do.

Obviously the anti-abortion crowd opposes this. However, I would guess that is simply because they oppose abortion in general. To avoid rehashing the same arguments, I would like ask if anyone thinks that minors having abortions is different than adults having abortions?

 

[blastula]

A minor simply doesn't have the capacity to give informed consent. She doesn't have the experience to protect herself in terms of understanding the procedures and the risks involved, the legal technicality, and for making sure the facility maintains a safe and ethical practice.

Apparently, in our society a minor cannot sign a contract without the parents, but when it comes to abortion she has the right to sign her consent for abortion without informing her parents.

 

[Cold Highway]

I honestly think parents should know it is surgery.

 

[1069]

Apparently, in our society a minor cannot sign a contract without the parents, but when it comes to abortion she has the right to sign her consent for abortion without informing her parents.

She can sign papers legally relinquishing her child for adoption after it is born, no matter what her age.
Her parents have no say in it; they cannot force her to sign, nor can they legally prevent her from signing.

If she keeps her child, she has the right to make any and all decisions for both herself and her child, including medical decisions. Her parents or guardians have no say.
In fact, even while pregnant, her parents or guardians have no say in her obstetrical care, her birthing decisions (c-section, epidural, analgesics, episiotomy, midwife, hospital birth, water birth, etc). They have no say in her postnatal decisions for her child (circumcision, correction of minor or cosmetic birth defects, etc).
They have no say in whether she breastfeeds or bottlefeeds, uses cloth diapers or disposable ones.
A minor parent can apply for and receive medicaid (in fact a pregnant minor can apply as soon as she knows she's pregnant), for WIC, for food stamps, for federally-funded housing.

Seeing a trend here?
We as a society have decided that the most expedient way of dealing with teen pregnancy is by granting pregnant minors a sort of pseudo-adult status.
The only other choice is to remove their children from their custody at birth, and frankly, that's not at all feasible. Nobody wants them, especially the minority ones, and the state can't afford to care for them in an institutional setting; there are too many, and it wouldn't be in their best interest, anyway; they're better off raised by 15-year-old mothers with state assistance than by paid employees in orphanages. Even in excellent institutional settings where the caretakers are consummate professionals, children grow up to be not right in the head- autistic and worse- if they remain in institutional care more than a few months or years, as evidenced by the current situation in Russia and China.

So, allowing pregnant minors to make their own reproductive decisions as far as abortion is concerned is at least consistent with the fact that pregnant minors who choose to gestate their fetuses to term will no longer be subject to the same laws and restrictions as other minors, but will be able to do pretty much everything adults do (including marry and- if married- buy alcohol or drink in bars by showing their marriage license, at least in my state).

 

[Jerry]

Alaska teens can make own abortion decision

By SHEILA TOOMEY
Anchorage Daily News
November 3, 2007

The Alaska Supreme Court threw out an embattled state law Friday that required parental or judicial consent before a teenager can have an abortion.

In a 3-2 decision, the court said the consent requirement robs a pregnant teen of her constitutional right to make such an important decision herself and transfers that right to her parents or a judge.

However, a law that required parents to be notified of a juvenile daughter's plan to have an abortion would probably be all right, said Chief Justice Dana Fabe in the majority decision for the court. It's a option many other states use, she noted.

As illustrated by the vote, the decision was a close call. Both sides agreed that the state has a compelling interest in protecting juvenile girls against their own immaturity and that parents have a constitutional right -- a duty -- to guide their children. They differed over whether giving parents veto power over a pregnant juvenile's abortion decision went too far.

In general, when the state rolls over an individual right, even for a good and important reason, it must do so in the least restrictive manner. Allowing parents or a judge to require a teenager to have a baby "does not strike the proper constitutional balance" between the state's interests and "the fundamental rights of its citizens," the court said.

The dissenting opinion, written by Justice Walter Carpeneti for himself and Justice Warren Matthews, said requiring parental consent does not cross the line.

The state Legislature carefully balanced all competing rights involved, Carpeneti said, and correctly concluded that requiring parental or judicial consent for an abortion "is the least restrictive alternative which will effectively advance the state's compelling interests while protecting the child's constitutional right."

>snip<

link

Round and round we go........she didn't have the right to begin with, but I'll bet she'd still have to have parental consent for a driver's licince, a work permit, or an ear piercing....let the cheezy music play.....didn't her parents have to sign some papers to get her into that public school (which will someday want to give her hormonal BC without a doctor and without parental consent), don't parents have to sign "permission" slips for her to go on a field trip, sounds like her right to free association is being infringed upon........weeeeeee......how can she afford an abortion if she's to young to work (without parental consent on the permit), to young to sign a contract for medical insurance (under 18 y/o)those poor widdle bitti chiwdwen (U1, everyone. Again the number is U1)...I know, Hillary Care.....weeeeeeee....

 

[Jerry]

It's one of the oldist tricks in the book...first you create the problem, then you become the solution...what's that called?

 

[The silenced majority]

It's one of the oldist tricks in the book...first you create the problem, then you become the solution...what's that called?

I'll say religion before one of the hacks does.








...and don't thank me.

 

[1069]

to young to sign a contract for medical insurance (under 18 y/o)

As I just stated, pregnant minors of any age can apply for medicaid, without parental consent, and that covers all their medical care, without parental consent, and from then on out, everything that goes on between the minor and her doctor is privileged and confidential, and her parents have no say in any of it, no right to access any of her medical records, no right to speak to her doctor about her and expect an answer.
You should know this; weren't you and your wife minors when you had your first kid? How'd you pay for it?

 

[talloulou]

The law is fvcked up every which way till Sunday when it comes to little girls. :roll: She can't take an aspirin at school but she can abort without parental consent. At a certain point common sense has gone completely out the god damn window. There are states where you are not old enough to consent to sex but are old enough to consent to an abortion without your parents knowledge. Like I said on the last thread the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As far as what I think on the matter I have a right to know what my kids are doing. If they're having some sort of surgery or taking some sort of prescribed drugs it's my business. If they are living under my roof, eating my food, and I'm responsible for them then it is ALL my business. There's just no way I'm gonna see it any other way. I don't think a parent should have the right to STOP or FORCE an abortion however they should most definitely be notified one way or another. Children, especially teens, are stupid. Incredibly stupid. That's why they still live at home and you got to feed 'em.

 

[1069]

The law is fvcked up every which way till Sunday when it comes to little girls. :roll: She can't take an aspirin at school but she can abort without parental consent. At a certain point common sense has gone completely out the god damn window. There are states where you are not old enough to consent to sex but are old enough to consent to an abortion without your parents knowledge. Like I said on the last thread the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As far as what I think on the matter I have a right to know what my kids are doing. If they're having some sort of surgery or taking some sort of prescribed drugs it's my business. If they are living under my roof, eating my food, and I'm responsible for them then it is ALL my business. There's just no way I'm gonna see it any other way. I don't think a parent should have the right to STOP or FORCE an abortion however they should most definitely be notified one way or another. Children, especially teens, are stupid. Incredibly stupid. That's why they still live at home and you got to feed 'em.

If you are a good parent, then your teenagers will want your involvement.
If some teenagers don't want their parents' involvement, I'm sure there's a sound reason, and that they'd have a better idea of what that reason is than you or I would, not living in their home.
Teenage parents can go on public assistance and support themselves, if their parents no longer wish to support them or if they no longer wish to be supported by their parents. This is not a life of ease and comfort, however (at least not compared to a middle-income existence); it is not a life most teenagers would choose- at least not for long- if they had any sort of reasonable relationship whatsoever with their parents.

Parents are just people who fucked. There's nothing that categorically makes them wise, well-intentioned, or well-suited for dictating the reproductive or parenting choices of some other person, whether or not that person happens to be of their blood.

 

[1069]

As far as what I think on the matter I have a right to know what my kids are doing. If they're having some sort of surgery or taking some sort of prescribed drugs it's my business. If they are living under my roof, eating my food, and I'm responsible for them then it is ALL my business.

You do not even have the right to see your teenagers' reproductive organs; you certainly don't have the right to touch them.
This being the case, why should you have the right to dictate what is done with them?
They are not, quite frankly, your "business".
Not after your child becomes too old for you to bathe.
They do not belong to you, but to the person whose body they are attached to, beginning roughly at puberty. A person beyond puberty has the right to bodily privacy, and, in my opinion, sovereignty, at least as far as their sexuality is concerned.
It really cannot be reasonably argued that your teenager's sexual organs are any of your "business"; you'd go to jail merely for demanding to see them. And rightly so. You have no right to them whatsoever; how can you argue that they are your business?

 

[Jerry]

I'll say religion before one of the hacks does.

...and don't thank me.

No no no there's like a latin fraze for it....

 

[Jerry]

You should know this; weren't you and your wife minors when you had your first kid? How'd you pay for it?

Nop, we wern't, but what I'm reading in your post is that big-bro....soon to possibly Big-Sis, has been undermining parents for longer than previously mentioned.....weeeeeee....

 

[Jerry]

Just making people's lives worse for exercising established legal rights is unjustifiable from a legal perspective, as there are established means to remove said rights if said rights are enough of a problem to get rid of.

....weeee I'm on the unicorn.....if one oposes Big-Bro eliminating rights, then since parental concent laws serve to protect the parent's constitutional right in the "care, control, and custody" of their children, one necciceraly suports parental consent laws....to opose parental concent laws is to opose personal rights, catigoricly.....round and round we go.....

 

[1069]

the parent's constitutional right in the "care, control, and custody" of their children

I've already outlined fairly concisely why it is not socially feasible or politically expedient to maintain the pretense that minor parents- or even pregnant minors- are "children".

It is better for society and ultimately for the children themselves to simply do what we do: grant the parents this pseudo-adult status and free them from most of the statutory restrictions other minors are subject to, under which it would be impossible to parent effectively.
Certainly one could not parent effectively with one's own parents butting in every five seconds with their two cents, now could one? Somebody's got to be the boss.

 

[Jerry]

I've already outlined fairly concisely why it is not socially feasible or politically expedient to maintain the pretense that minor parents- or even pregnant minors- are "children".

It is better for society and ultimately for the children themselves to simply do what we do: grant the parents this pseudo-adult status and free them from most of the statutory restrictions other minors are subject to, under which it would be impossible to parent effectively.
Certainly one could not parent effectively with one's own parents butting in every five seconds with their two cents, now could one? Somebody's got to be the boss.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

Link


The next number is T2.

Again, T2, everyone.

 

[talloulou]

If you are a good parent, then your teenagers will want your involvement.

Not necessarily true. Great parents can have a couple great kids and one who's a complete dumba$$ criminal. It happens. Kids come with their own personalities. You might have a daughter who is so wrapped up in her boyfriend that she's beyond stupid. Thinking your kids will come to you for everything just 'cause you're a "good parent" is naive.

If some teenagers don't want their parents' involvement, I'm sure there's a sound reason, and that they'd have a better idea of what that reason is than you or I would, not living in their home.

Yeah maybe sometimes there is a good reason but I bet much of the time it's cause they're being stupid and on some level they recognize their own stupidity so they hide in shame.

Parents are just people who fucked. There's nothing that categorically makes them wise, well-intentioned, or well-suited for dictating the reproductive or parenting choices of some other person, whether or not that person happens to be of their blood.

Parents are hopefully the people most concerned with the general well being of their child. Yes there are tragic shitty parents but in most cases parents love the heck out of their kids. Teenagers are in the business of lying, sneaking around, blowing over boundaries, ect. It's all part of growing up. But the government's job isn't to help them sneak around, lie, ect. If your 16 year old daughter goes in to the hospital for a cholecystectomy, appendectomy, tonsillectomy, ect the drs. are gonna let you know. The hospital is going to have you sign forms ect. Abortion should be no different. Hell the school is going to call you if your kid stops showing up in class. The police are going to bring them home to your door if they're out after curfew, out drinking, ect. Planned parenthood should give you a ring if they're about to do a procedure.

 

[1069]

Not necessarily true. Great parents can have a couple great kids and one who's a complete dumba$$ criminal. It happens. Kids come with their own personalities. You might have a daughter who is so wrapped up in her boyfriend that she's beyond stupid. Thinking your kids will come to you for everything just 'cause you're a "good parent" is naive.

Yeah maybe sometimes there is a good reason but I bet much of the time it's cause they're being stupid and on some level they recognize their own stupidity so they hide in shame.



Parents are hopefully the people most concerned with the general well being of their child. Yes there are tragic shitty parents but in most cases parents love the heck out of their kids. Teenagers are in the business of lying, sneaking around, blowing over boundaries, ect. It's all part of growing up. But the government's job isn't to help them sneak around, lie, ect. If your 16 year old daughter goes in to the hospital for a cholecystectomy, appendectomy, tonsillectomy, ect the drs. are gonna let you know. The hospital is going to have you sign forms ect. Abortion should be no different. Hell the school is going to call you if your kid stops showing up in class. The police are going to bring them home to your door if they're out after curfew, out drinking, ect. Planned parenthood should give you a ring if they're about to do a procedure.

Oh well. That's an interesting perspective but most state legislators don't see it that way, I guess.
Presumably, they are in a better position to judge what's best than you are, since we elected them, not you.

 

[talloulou]

You do not even have the right to see your teenagers' reproductive organs; you certainly don't have the right to touch them.
This being the case, why should you have the right to dictate what is done with them?
They are not, quite frankly, your "business".

I don't think I should have the right to dictate what happens to them. I do think, however, that "parenthood" and "guardianship" should be respected institutions and I have a right to be NOTIFIED. I have a right to know what another adult is doing to my child when my child is still considered a "minor" and I'm the guardian. There is no point in "undermining" the parent/child relationship. If your child gets caught doing drugs someone is going to call you. If your child gets in a car accident someone is going to call you. If your child ends up in the ER for any reason someone is going to call you. Why? Cause you are that minors guardian. Forgive me for not believing the "hype"
that abortion is significantly different from anything else and therefore the minors should be able to have other adults do things to their body "confidentially" behind the parent or guardians back.

They do not belong to you, but to the person whose body they are attached to, beginning roughly at puberty. A person beyond puberty has the right to bodily privacy, and, in my opinion, sovereignty, at least as far as their sexuality is concerned.

If I am their guardian and their primary care giver and they are considered a minor in the eyes of the law then their business is my business END OF STORY. If they were able to handle crap all on their own then why are they minors with guardians?

It really cannot be reasonably argued that your teenager's sexual organs are any of your "business"; you'd go to jail merely for demanding to see them. And rightly so. You have no right to them whatsoever; how can you argue that they are your business?

A minor who is too young to consent to sex is to young to consent to an abortion. The consent laws are in place to keep more mature adults from preying on young minors because the more mature adults are adept at manipulating stupid young teens. Abortion is similarly a "huge decision" and one that, in my mind, a minor shouldn't be making without talking to the adults/guardians that have brought her up. Her parents shouldn't get the final say, they shouldn't make the decision, however they do deserve to be notified, and have at the very least an opportunity to discuss the situation with the minor who is dealing with a very adult issue. You want to completely disrespect parents and the guardian role and suggest that an emotional teen at an awkward stupid age is best off speaking solely to some goof at a clinic who doesn't know her. That's absurd.

And to say she will come to you if you're a good parent is just hor$e$hit. It depends on the kids. Some kids are easily shamed, manipulated by boyfriends, ect. Saying that these young women should be able to abort without their parents being notified undermines parents everywhere and suggests that young emotional dimwitted teenage girls making one of the biggest decisions of their life are best left ALONE and that's just sick and stupid.