The Parental Notification Debate
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Created: 02:31 AM, Thursday 29 April, 2010
Comments: The Parental Notification Debate
Parental notification and consent laws for abortion have long been part of successful anti-abortion wedge campaigning in the U.S., and there's a move to push for them here. But, like everything else in the abortion debate, the issue is not as simple as proponents of such laws would have you believe.
[This post was updated 5 December 2010]
On 3 December, 2010, Family First NZ issued a press statement stating that Prime Minister John Key was ignoring calls for parental notification, that is, a law mandating that parents be notified if their under 16-year-old daughter is pregnant and considering an abortion. The statement followed a 'live chat' in which Key was asked about parental notification and responded that there were no plans to change the current law, as set out in the Care of Children Act.
The "calls" Key was allegedly ignoring are from Family First and other anti-abortion advocates, and based around an opinion survey Family First carried out and promoted earlier this year, on 18 April, via press statement. In the statement, FF asserted that the survey showed “strong support” for a law that would require parental notification.
According to FF, in response to the question, “Should the law require parents to always be informed before-hand if their daughter who is under 16 is pregnant and wants to have an abortion?”, 79% responded yes, only 12% said no, and 9% either didn’t know or refused to answer.
Parental notification laws are a favourite issue of anti-abortion advocates and a frequent starting point in efforts to chip away – one law at a time – at women’s reproductive rights. They are popular because they tap into parents’ concern about their daughters and because they are seen by abortion opponents as a weak point in the pro-choice case.
Why? First, because of the kind of results Family First achieved in its opinion survey, are common for polls on this issue, particularly before there’s been any public discussion of the complex issues involved.
Second, because, as anti-choice advocates know, such campaigns can be a trap for the unwary pro-choice supporter. Part of the strategy of these campaigns is to try to portray those who support a woman’s right to choose as people who want to stop you from taking care of your daughter. After all, what parent would want their daughter to be facing such a decision at 15, 14, or 11, with or without their knowing about it? None of us would, that’s who, and anti-abortion advocates know that. In fact, there are lots of things parents wouldn’t want their 15-year-old daughters doing behind their backs, meaning part of the reason 79% of respondents answer “yes” to questions like the one put by Family First is not necessarily based on how they feel about abortion, but about their role as parents and what they want for their children.
The Law and the Debate in NZ
Under New Zealand law as it stands, young women and girls under 16 years of age can choose to continue a pregnancy or seek an abortion, just as any other woman can (that is, without requiring the consent or knowledge of a parent or guardian or husband). In 2009, the latest year for which there are figures, 79 girls aged 11-14 years had abortions in New Zealand, down from a peak of 105 in 2006. Click here for Section 38 of the Care of Children Act 2004, titled “Consent to abortion”, which reads as follows:
(1) If given by a female child (of whatever age), the following have the same effect as if she were of full age:
(a) a consent to the carrying out on her of any medical or surgical procedure for the purpose of terminating her pregnancy by a person professionally qualified to carry it out; and
(b) a refusal to consent to the carrying out on her of any procedure of that kind.
Because abortion is still criminalized in New Zealand, all women – young or older – must also go through the same cumbersome approval procedures, including authorisation by two certifying consultants under the grounds laid out in the Crimes Act. Most abortions in New Zealand are approved under the so-called mental health ground (“That the continuance of the pregnancy would result in serious danger (not being danger normally attendant upon childbirth) to the life, or to the physical or mental health, of the woman or girl”) (For more details of the law and a critique, click here.)
The last time the parental notification question was voted on was in 2004 when the then National MP Judith Collins proposed changing the Care of Children Bill to mandate parental notification for under 16s, an effort 62% of MPs voted against. Opinion surveys at the time produced similar results to those obtained in Family First’s, with 71% of respondents to a 2004 Herald poll supporting parental notification.
Then, as now, the most vocal groups speaking out in favour of the proposal were anti-abortion groups. Voice for Life was outraged at the vote in Parliament, which its president described as part of “the arrogant Government liberal agenda juggernaut”. Ken Orr of Right to Life joined in, calling it, in a letter to the editor of The DomPost, a violation of parental rights. He went on to argue that: “The parents of the girl are, in fact, the grandparents of the child, which they might wish to adopt or arrange for an adoption”. More recently, on 30 November 2010, Brendan Malone of Family Life International NZ stated that the current law, by denying parents "the right to prevent their under 16 year old child from having an abortion ... is a clear violation of their natural law parental rights."
Brendan Malone and Ken Orr's points are crucial, and rather chilling in their suggestions that the decision should be that of the pregnant teenager’s parents. Or, to put it another way, that parents should be permitted by law to be able to force an under-16 year old to bear a child against her will.
Understandably, many of us would agree that a 12 or 14-year-old isn’t mature enough to cope on her own with such a difficult decision and needs the help and guidance of her parents -- and as we point out below, most girls will voluntarily seek that help and guidance. However on the flip side of that worthy sentiment are scenarios like those laid out by Mr Malone and Mr Orr – giving parents who, for example, “might wish to adopt or arrange for an adoption” the power to force that decision upon a pregnant 11, 12, 13-year old girl.
Certainly this is a question of wanting to protect and care for children in a very difficult situation, but surely that also means protecting them from those who might force pregnant teenagers in either direction – to become mothers against their will, or to undergo an abortion against their will.
To that end, pro-choice advocates argue that minors should not require parental consent/notification to carry pregnancies to term, just as they should not require it if they wish to terminate a pregnancy. Curiously, (or perhaps not) it’s only the latter situation that proponents of notification and consent laws seem concerned about, something Florida’s supreme courted pointed out in 2003 when it struck down a notification law in that state. The court, according to The Center for Reproductive Rights, “noted the irony that an abortion is much safer than child-birth and yet a minor is not required under this law to consult a parent about carrying her pregnancy to term.” (Florida subsequently passed another parental notification law which has been upheld and is now in force for women and girls under 18.)
A related question is that of what happens when a minor does become a parent? What notifications should be required then? The Guttmacher Institute observed that while a majority of states in the U.S. now do have parental notification laws regarding abortion,
in sharp contrast, states overwhelmingly consider minors who are parents to be capable of making critical decisions affecting the health and welfare of their children without their own parents’ knowledge or consent. … Moreover, most states authorize minor parents to make health decisions for their children, and some allow minor parents to authorize surgery.
All of which begs the question: is this really about parental rights, or is it about abortion? What should and must be available (and is in New Zealand), is non-judgmental, caring and responsible counseling in which the teenager is encouraged to involve her parents in either decision. And in New Zealand, with no notification or consent mandates, that is precisely what most teenagers choose to do.
Teenagers Tell Their Parents
Back in 2004, when debate over the Care of Children Bill was raging, ALRANZ did some research on precisely that question, and what it found became the source material for an article in The DominionPost, in which reporter Andrew Kelly wrote:
Twenty-two were aged 14 and three were 13 when they had the procedure at Wellington Hospital. Eighteen had talked to a parent who was aware and supportive of their plans, two told an aunt, two informed a teacher or school counsellor, and two told another trusted adult. Only one girl had not told an adult about her abortion, but she cited a history of family violence.
Unfortunately, that was second paragraph of the article. Instead of leading with a “most pregnant teens tell parents” angle – which is precisely what opponents of parental notification had been arguing and what the data showed – The DomPost preferred to lead the story with this: “Seven of the 25 young girls who had abortions in Wellington last year did not tell their parents.” We don’t know of any more detailed studies in New Zealand on this question, which is unfortunate. But in the United States, the Guttmacher Institute reports similar findings:
More than six in 10 teenagers in states without a parental consent requirement say one or both parents knew about the abortion, according to a study published in 1992 in Family Planning Perspectives (FPP). A similar study published in 1987 in AJPH found that the proportion of teens who inform their parents is approximately the same in states with and without such requirements.
ALRANZ’s Dame Margaret Sparrow said at the time that the figures showed the law was working. “The staff at the Wellington clinic are encouraging young people to tell their parents,” she told The DomPost, “but there are rare situations where telling a parent may be counterproductive and disadvantageous for the young person.”
Expanding on that point, Alranz wrote in its submission on the 2004 legislation, that:
the need to reinforce family relationships is the reason most often cited to justify laws requiring parental notification or consent before abortion. Such laws are unnecessary for stable and supportive families and they are ineffective for unstable, troubled families. They cannot transform abusive families into supportive ones. Instead they may add to the problems faced by the pregnant girl and expose her to the risk of emotional trauma or physical danger. Forced communication may have disastrous results.
Also during the 2004 debate, physician organizations joined in the opposition to mandatory notification, and for similar reasons to those given by advocates for adolescents and choice, with the DomPost reporting that “the Royal College of General Practitioners and the New Zealand Medical Association have written to MPs urging them to reject the proposal, saying it would breach patient confidentiality and could force girls who wanted their pregnancy kept secret to seek illegal abortions.”
Impact on Abortion Rates
But what of the claims by anti-abortion advocates, including Family First in its latest press release, that parental notification laws reduce abortion rates among teenagers? These days, it’s pretty easy to find data to back up whatever position you hold on abortion (that it causes depression, breast cancer, child abuse, etc. or that it doesn’t), and the same is true of outcomes from parental notification laws.
Guttmacher has published a literature review of studies on this topic in the United States. It reports that the clearest impact of such laws "is an increase in the number of minors travelling outside their home states to obtain abortion services in states that do not mandate parental involvement or that have less restrictive laws." (Clearly, this would not be an option for young women and girls in New Zealand.)
It pointed out that most studies reporting a decline in minors' abortion rates associated with these laws did not measure abortions among minors who left the state.
One study from The New England Journal of Medicine looking at a Texas notification law (which applies to young women under the age of 18 and came into effect in January 2000), does indeed show a drop in abortion rates among teens, but that’s not all it showed. To quote the authors’ summary of the study:
The enforcement of a parental notification law in Texas has been associated with lower abortion rates among minors and increased birth rates among older minors who were 17.50 to 17.74 years of age at the time of conception. We also found an increase in second-trimester terminations among teens who did not reach the age of 18 years until after the first trimester of pregnancy.
[SOURCE: Changes in Abortions and Births and the Texas Parental Notification Law. Theodore Joyce, Ph.D., Robert Kaestner, Ph.D., and Silvie Colman, B.B.A. New England Journal of Medicine. 2006;354:1031-8.]
As an article in “Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health” put it, that “some minors postpone abortion until the second or even third trimester of pregnancy to circumvent parental notification requirements. Given the greater costs of and medical risks associated with late-term abortions, policymakers should not ignore this behavior.”
[SOURCE: Minors’ Behavioral Responses to Parental Involvement Laws: Delaying Abortion Until Age 18 By Silvie Colman and Ted Joyce. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2009, 41(2):119–126, doi:10.1363/4111909]
For pro-choice advocates, a drop in abortion rates among under 16s would not be welcome if that drop were the result of coerced pregnancies.
Zoo trips vs. pregnancy
Proponents of these laws also like to provoke outrage by questioning why parental permission is needed for zoo trips or netball games -- the two examples Family First uses in its latest press release -- but not abortion.
It doesn't take too much thought to appreciate why such comparisons are disingenuous, or to see the myriad ways these situations are wholly incomparable. Just for starters, given the age of consent, if an under 16-year-old girl is pregnant, a crime has been committed -- and it may even have been committed by a family member.
Pro-choice and anti-abortion advocates surely agree that pregnancy is rather more serious, with rather more profound implications, than zoo trips or netball tournaments. For the anti-abortion advocate, this is all the more reason to insist on parental notification or consent. For the pro-choice advocate, the implications of pregnancy and childbirth and abortion for a young woman's present and future life is all the more reason to ensure that she is protected, where necessary, from coercion, from assault, from abuse; that she is not forced by law to inform parents where it is not safe for her to do so.
Anti-Choice Strategy
As noted above, parental notification is a wedge tactic – start with the politically “easiest” abortion restrictions and move on from there.
In a recent column in the Los Angeles Times, law professor Caitlin Borgmann, responded to the now constant stream of anti-choice legislation in the United States by making clear the long-term anti-choice strategy behind each and every push to ostensibly “protect women”, “protect parental rights”, “protect teenagers”, “protect minorities”, “provide information”, “provide informed consent” and so on:
Abortion legislation today commonly masquerades as something much smaller than a call to ban all abortions. Laws that require teens to consult their parents before obtaining abortions purport to encourage family communication and protect youth from rash decision-making. Laws that require women to wait 48 hours and make two trips to the doctor before obtaining an abortion are cast as ensuring "informed consent." Ostensibly, Nebraska's new law addresses fetal pain. But these narrow aims are not what the laws are really about. A 2007 strategy memo by antiabortion leader James Bopp Jr. promotes ‘incremental’ abortion restrictions as an interim tactic until abortion can be fully banned. The memo points out that these more limited measures serve to ‘keep the abortion issue alive and change hearts and minds’ and thus to ‘translate into more disfavor for all abortions.’
Just One More Thing
And just one more thing. In its April press release and again in December, Family First National Director Bob McCoskrie argued that bringing in a parental notification law was “especially relevant when almost 80 teenagers a week have an abortion in NZ.” It is disingenuous to cite this figure in a discussion of mandatory notification for under 16s because it includes all 11 to 19-year-olds, many of whom a parental notification law would not affect.
According to Statistics NZ, in the 11-14 age group, there were 79 abortions in 2009, (1.5 a week) and in the 15-19 year group, 3,871 (around 74 a week). The figures do not offer a 15-years and under breakdown, but it’s clear that would fall far far short of 80 abortions a week.
All of which leads one to ask again: is this really about parental rights, or is it about abortion?
Some Links:
NARAL: Restrictions on Young Women’s Access to Abortion Care
NARAL: Mandatory Parental Involvement Laws Threaten Young Women's Safety
NARAL: Who Decides? The Status of Reproductive Rights in the U.S.
Guttmacher: A fact sheet: Parental Involvement in Minors’ Abortions (December 2010) THIS IS A PDF
Guttmacher: An Overview of Minors’ Consent Law (December 2010) THIS IS A PDF
Guttmacher: Forcing parental involvement in reproductive health decisions may put teens in danger (October 2005):
Guttmacher: Teenagers' Access to Confidential Reproductive Health Services (November 2005):
Center for Reproductive Rights: More Harm than Good: Florida’s Constitutional Amendment on Parental Notification for Abortion Statement from Nancy Northup, President, Center for Reproductive Rights:
Sometimes abortion is the better choice: Should the U.S. government really be in the business of encouraging women to have babies? by Frances Kissling
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