Parental notification laws regarding teenagers getting abortions have been a huge flash point in the debate, especially since SCOTUS has allowed them as a restriction on “abortion rights.” Supporters talk about informed consent and parental rights and, implicitly, the belief that such laws will reduce abortions. Opponents talk about individual rights, worries about parental violence, and teens either getting back alley abortions or being forced to carry children to term.
Interestingly enough, though, parental notification laws don’t seem to have made noticeable difference in abortion rates.
The analysis, which looked at six states that introduced parental involvement laws in the last decade and is believed to be the first study to include data from years after 1999, found instead a scattering of divergent trends. For instance, in Tennessee, the abortion rate went down when a federal court suspended a parental consent requirement, then rose when the law went back into effect. In Texas, the rate fell after a notification law went into effect, but not as fast as it did in the years before the law. In Virginia, the rate barely moved when the state introduced a notification law in 1998, but fell after the requirement was changed to parental consent in 2003.
[…] Abortion rates have been dropping nationwide since the mid-1980’s, most precipitously for teenagers. But in three states — Arizona, Idaho and Tennessee — the percentage of pregnant minors who had abortions rose slightly after the consent laws went into effect.
When the Times study compared the first full year after a state began enforcing a parental law with the last full year before the law, it found that abortions among minors dropped an average of 9 percent. But in the same period, the rates for pregnant 18- and 19-year-olds, who were not affected by the law, dropped by 5 percent, suggesting that most of the drop among minors was associated with other factors that affected minors and adults alike.
Interestingly, parental involvement doesn’t seem to always focus on blocking abortions.
But providers interviewed in 10 states with parental involvement laws all said that of the minors who came into their clinics, parents were more often the ones pushing for an abortion, even against the wishes of their daughters.
“I see far more parents trying to pressure their daughters to have one,” said Jane Bovard, owner of the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, N.D., a state where a minor needs consent from both parents. “As a parent myself, I can understand. But I say to parents, ‘You force her to have this abortion, and I can tell you that within the next six months she’s going to be pregnant again.’ “
Renee Chelian, director of Northland Family Planning Centers in the Detroit area, said she had had to call the police on parents who wanted their daughters to have abortions, “because they threaten physical violence on the kids.”
Swell. Of course, parents who were opposed to such abortions and who declined to give consent wouldn’t be seen by those folks. And overall trends are one thing, and individual cases are another. I’m sure that supporters and opponents of such bills can find anecdotal cases of young women who had problems in the absence of, or presence of, such laws. Still, if supporters of such laws thought they would lead to a significant drop (beyond the natoinal average) in teen abortion rates, and opponents feared that kids would either be prevented from having desired abortions or be forced to flee to another jurisdiction — both hopes and fears appear not to have come to pass.
I’d support a constitutional amendment that says; “When it is simply not clear that a law will do as much good as harm, the government should just stay out of it.” Unfortunately the good/harm is all too clear to zealots on both sides of the issue.